Will Faf du Plessis Break the Choke?

Or Will the Protea Captain, Like So Many Before Him, Leave the World Cup Choked Up and Broken?

As the Proteas get ready to set off for England, and their eighth World Cup campaign, it is becoming obvious that this is not one of the stronger teams to attempt the feat. Quite the opposite: with every member of the fast bowling attack sporting one injury or another, the batting line up fragile, the players union threatening legal action against Cricket South Africa and the ever-increasing trend of political interference, this is probably the weakest team yet, with the possible exception of the inexperienced 1992 squad. And yet, and yet. There is one area where this team might strike a blow and succeed where all previous teams failed. That should be reason enough for any Protea fan to follow the World Cup.

In 1992, Kepler Wessels led a team of amateur cricketers, there mainly for the experience, to the World Cup semifinal, before an untimely shower rained on their parade. Four years later, Hansie Cronjé’s team conquered all before them, until confused selection left both Fanie de Villiers and Alan Donald on the sidelines, allowing Brian Lara to singlehandedly dispose of the Protea campaign. By 1999, the Proteas were already on the wane: the team stumbled into the semifinal only because Lance Klusener was in the midst of reinventing limited overs batting – it turns out you CAN hit the good balls. Inevitably, his luck eventually ran out, even if the timing could hardly have been worse. After that, the Proteas barely cracked winning 50% of their games in World Cups, and a lot less when chasing. You might argue that rather than choke, recent Protea teams have just not been good enough to make a dent. Yet the charge of choking sticks exactly because the Proteas, unlike say New Zealand, always fare worse at a World Cup than you would expect based on form and talent.

Understandably, an entire possession of coaches and captains have denied the choking tag at every available opportunity. Who would want a career’s worth of hard work and successes simply filed under ‘also choked when it mattered?’ However, the reality is that there is a wealth of self-inflicted wounds to point to, and without acknowledging past mistakes, it is hard to see how the habit will be broken.

It is tempting to pretend that the Proteas simply suffer from bad luck, and that someday soon the law of averages will rescue them from further embarrassment. That has been the preferred approach of Protea management and coaches. The problem is that at the end of every World Cup campaign, like clockwork at the first knockout game until the 2015 tournament, the excuse wears thinner. At seven losses to one win over a should-have-retired-by-now-and-watched-the-Cup-from-home Sri Lankan outfit, it should be obvious that it is more than just a bout of bad luck.

It is equally tempting, at least for those not directly involved in the campaigns, to simply dismiss the choking as hare-brained decisions and team selections that came home to roost. The most recent example would be the much-denied political interference that saw an in-form Kyle Abbott dropped for the 2015 semifinal. An even better example was the game plan for the 2007 semifinal against the Australians (who else?). On the back of the 438 game, the Proteas were extremely sloppy when they met Australia in the first round, allowing the Australians to score about 50 runs more than they should have. Predictably, Australia coasted to an easy win. Not to worry: the brains thrust (using the word loosely) had a brain wave for the semifinal: just bat like it is a 400-run pitch and voilá. Predictably, wickets tumbled as the runs faltered, but there was no going back to reason. Cricket games are seldom lost inside the first hour, but that fateful day the Proteas achieved it. And if you are scoring this at home, that definitely qualifies as a choke.

No, the Proteas choke not because they sometimes (okay, often) come up with a bad game plan – they choke because of their absolute adherence to their game plan, good or bad. This is ultimately what made the 2007 semifinal such a disaster: the fact that no batsman was allowed to say ‘wait a bit, this isn’t working…’ The Protea approach is simple: if Plan A does NOT work, we do Plan A HARDER! The result of that approach is there for all to see.

An even better example on boneheaded adherence to plan occurred during the opening game of the 2013 ICC Championship Trophy (another tournament littered with examples of Protea choking). The Protea plan was to bounce out the Indian batsmen. Not necessarily a bad plan, though one might ask how well this plan would work in Cardiff. Even the best plan, tailor-made for the pitch, don’t always work as expected, and on an unhelpful pitch this plan quickly went sideways: the Indian batsmen hooked and pulled to heart’s content. By the end, everybody wondered why the Proteas kept bowling short. Everyone other than the one man who could do something about it. When the Protea skipper, AB de Villiers, was asked about bowling short he simply repeated what he had been told: the Proteas preferred getting ‘hit off their lengths, instead of down the ground.’ Never once in fifty overs did it occur to the captain that the plan was not working, or that he should try something else. His brain comfortably parked in neutral, he was simply acting as a deposit box for the coach’s plan. A disillusioned fan might ask: Why have a captain, if he is simply going to be a recording of the coach?

The unthinking adherence to preconceived plan is why the Proteas choke. All plans will be tested sooner or later. The mark of a champion is how he responds when that happens. The Proteas, to be blunt, have not been champions for a very long time. But this is exactly where Faf can be different.

There is also this: a plan that works great today will be studied, in some depth, but future opponents, especially during a World Cup tournament. The plan will always have a limited shelf life. It is vital to have a Plan B, and even better to have Plans C and D ready to go, just in case. No Protea team have ever showed evidence of bothering with a Plan B.

The Proteas would do well to reflect on Dwight Eisenhower’s reflection on the value of plans: ‘In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.’ Faf du Plessis, are you listening? Let go of the plans. Hold on to what you learned through the planning. That flexibility might just get you to the final and then anything can happen.

In the upcoming World Cup, we don’t know if it will be the Dale Steyn hat trick or the Aiden Markram ODI maiden century that will win a key game, but it might be the Aiden Markram hat trick or the Dale Steyn maiden century that floors the opponents. You cannot plan for the latter two, but the wrong game plan can exclude such outcomes. It is vitally important for Faf du Plessis to be thinking outside the box, and to be coming up with solutions where the rest of us are just seeing problems right now.

He must also know that Aiden Markram can hit a quick-fire century without much input from his captain. However, if he is to take five wickets, in a must-win game, his skipper will be key in managing the moment. Not many skippers have that talent in them. Faf, have you called Shane Warne yet?

On the opposite end of the challenge, there is the question of what to tell Dale Steyn if he walks out to bat with South Africa stuttering at 101/6. It is unclear if there is much helpful the captain can say, whether he is still batting or not. The champion captain then, is the one already wondering what to say in such a situation, and who is ready to remind the veteran of his previous achievements with the bat.

Perhaps Faf can get inspiration from an unlikely source. If you were to compile a list of the ten most innovative cricket captains in history, Kepler Wessels is unlikely to crack a nod. Yet it was Wessels who started using a young batsman to share the fifth bowler’s duty. At first, you could see the relief on the batsman’s face when he got to the end of his fifth over having conceded only about 20 runs. What Wessels noticed, however, was that the young batsman was a competitor at heart. With every game, it was less about relief and more about competing. Before the year was out, South Africa was playing their first home ODI ever, against a strong touring team, and making no headway in the field. Then the fifth bowlers entered the fray. Not only did he take the first wicket that day, he also bowled his full quota of ten overs and took five wickets before hitting the winning runs with a six off the first ball of the final over – launching the legend of Hansie Cronjé. Legend, one would add, comes with its own challenges.

If Faf du Plessis is going to break the chokehold, he is going to have to launch a legend of his own. Let us hope Faf du Plessis is already furiously thinking where this legend is going to come from and his own role in convincing a currently middle of the road player that he really has the makings of a legend in him.