How Faf messed up a World Cup campaign in no time flat
Faf du Plessis’ laid back approach was always in danger of blowing up in his face. The relaxed, but determined attitude he was envisioning instead replaced with loss of focus and nervousness. Hurting Protea fans will be asking themselves: will this ever end? SA Cricket’s stock response: ‘keep the faith and all will be well’ is wearing thin. It might be too late to save the current campaign, with victories over the ever overachieving Kiwis (Why can’t the Proteas do World Cups like that?) and a suddenly resurgent Australia appearing extremely unlikely.
How did the Proteas and skipper Faf in particular mess this up so quickly? The answer consist of two parts: the call at the toss (Of course!) and the underlying reason the Proteas ALWAYS panic/choke.
It is sometimes joked that the definition of stress is the confusion created when one's mind overrides the body's desire to beat up some birdbrain who desperately needs it. The Protea version would be: the confusion created when the coach’s detailed instructions are in direct opposition with the larger goal of winning the current game. What does the Protea player do? Think about it: if you defy the coach, and fail to win the game, the coach will blame YOU, potentially publicly, for the loss. Stick to the plan, and you are complicit in a slow-moving train wreck. Is it any wonder that the average Protea chokes?
Steve Jobs once commented that it doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do. You hire smart people so that they can tell you what needs to be done. Somehow, but unsurprisingly, Cricket SA did NOT get the memo. The VIPs at Cricket SA somehow believes that they know better than our extremely talented cricketers. History has repeatedly proven them wrong, but, hey, why would important people like that listen to anybody?
Amazingly, Faf has apparently not noticed that the Protea cricket team can’t chase a score to save its life. This has always been true, but was underlined during the 2015 campaign, when South Africa arguably had its best batting lineup yet. The team was to prove correct current Pakistan bowling coach Azhar Mahmood’s theory (batsmen win you games, bowlers win you tournaments). Sadly they did so with their lack of bowlers, at least once a particularly dishonest SA Cricket chief had their new bowling ace, Kyle Abbott dropped for the semifinal against New Zealand.
More to the point: the 2015 team showed that they could routinely set targets around the 400-mark (339/4 against Zimbabwe, recovering from an embarrassing 83/4; 408/5 against West Indies and 411/4 against Ireland). Less inspiring was that the very same batting lineup had trouble getting past 200 when chasing (only 177 all out chasing 308 against India and 202 all out chasing a modest 233 against Pakistan, with the only successful chase the 134/1 in the quarterfinal against Sri Lanka, as if to prove the point). Faf, were you there? How is it possible that you didn’t notice?
Admittedly, a South African captain can’t exactly come out and admit to all and sundry how terrible his team is at chasing. During regular bilateral series you have to pretend it doesn’t matter. But this is NOT a regular bilateral series, it’s the World Cup, crying out load. Put the pride away, and go for the jugular. NEVER BOWL FIRST!!!!
The good news is that the fix isn’t complicated: NEVER bowl first if you can help it and tell the players to ignore EVERYTHING the coach(es) said. Go out there, and enjoy yourselves, chaps. If we lose, at least you would have enjoyed the experience. And who knows? In spite of Cricket SA’s determined effort to destroy EVERYTHING, you might still defy them and achieve the near impossible… #ProteaFire indeed…
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