CRICKET WORLD CUP
Beheading time looms for Proteas
The demand for sacrifice is inevitable, but will it lead to improvement for SA cricket?
Now that the Proteas’ World Cup is effectively over, the nation’s cricket authorities will engage in that time-honoured pastime of "throwing under the bus".The first candidates will be Ottis Gibson, the national coach, and Dale Benkenstein, his No 2.Neither has covered themselves in glory during the past month. Gibson doesn’t live in SA and flits in and out of the country. You wonder how much domestic cricket he actually watches. Benkenstein’s sin is arguably greater. When England batsmen Jonny Bairstow and Jason Roy were pulverising the dangerous Indian spinners Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal at Edgbaston on Sunday, one couldn’t help but think back to how these two had mesmerised the Proteas.It is Benkenstein’s job as batting coach to put in place strategies for dealing with the threat of wrist-spin, but a plan in the Proteas’ game against India was conspicuously lacking. Roy and Bairstow targeted the short Edgbaston boundary; they used their feet and swept and reverse swept. T...
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