Containment Need Of The Hour

What is really wrong with the bowling attack at the moment, why can’t we not get the Aussies out for less, is what I hear all the time from the man in thestreet.

If we reflect on each bowler that the Proteas have had at their disposal throughout the Aussie campaign, there is no doubt that each one is capableof getting top players out. They have done it before and their career statistics clearly indicate it. So why can’t they do it now?

It is my belief that the mindset a bowler needs to have at the highest level is to understand the fundamentals of Testcricket -- and they haven’t changed for many decades. The single most important point to understand is thatvery rarely do top batters get out without being subjected to pressure from within or from outside his mental environs.

A bowler cannot expect the best players to give their wickets away. He must accept that it will take asequence of events to create an opportunity, whether it is bowling maidens or plugging away on a weakness, it just does not happen regularly against thegood players.

It’s easy to get lulled into the mindset of not earning a wicket when playing against mediocre opposition. Against teams like Zimbabwe and evenIndia to a lesser extent, a bowler can afford to experiment and still get away with the odd bad over or even a few, without being punished to thepoint that he is taken out of the attack.

The present predicament is that bowlers like Ntini, Kallis, Nel, Klusener and Boje who backup the strikers like Donald and Pollock, are not doing aholding job at certain critical stages. This isn’t because they don’t want to or that they can’t, it is simply a case of having the correct mindsetfor getting wickets which creates an inroad from which the attack can dominate and win sessions.

The subtle difference to the one-day game is that in limited overs cricket a bowler is happy to settle for just a few runs perover. This kind of mindset is very dangerous as it can manifest itself into the psyche of the bowler and it remains there even in Test matches.

Sometimes a bowler can be asked to perform a specific role, like Kallis or Ntini having to tie upan end and create pressure, but if this is a foreign role to his natural game, he would not be able to concentrate for say 18overs of the day doing that task. Shorter spells would help him get through the time when concentration starts to go and the urge to revert back towhat he knows best comes to the fore.

South Africa needs to create an environment of pressure and based on the fact that the Australians like to score at a brisk pace, the bowling ofdot balls and creating pressure becomes paramount to the entire strategy.

It forces batsmen into taking risks. In past times bowlers like Matthews, De Villiers and Cronje were invaluable. Coupled with each other for a periodof time and even a session of tight spin for a period often created an opportunity to bring back the strike bowler with runs to play with.

Boucher needs to identify in his own mind who he thinks can do the holding job at certain times, and when the instruction comes that it must be done,the bowler must recognize that stage of the game and buy into the plan immediately.

No team no matter how good the depth and strength of the bowling attack, can afford to ignore the fact that at times it will be required to buildpressure through patience and perseverance. It is the single difference  between success and failure for many batsmen.

Throughout the Wanderers Test, the Proteas attack could not create enough pressure to force errorsconsistently. Some will argue that it due to a lack of ability while I believe it be a classic case of not reading and understanding the statusof the game until it’s too late to pull it back. Once the floodgates open, it is almost impossible to stop.

I hope that between Ford and Boucher, they make it clear to all that run-scoring is central to the Aussie game plan and that this can beconverted to their weakness if everyone understands their role clearly at critical, defining moments and that to just focus on the job at handwithout looking too far into the next phase of play, be it the next ball or thenext over is absolutely essential for success.