“Even though he sees the game at a good angle from behind the stumps, he’s far from his bowlers.” - Johan Botha on Quinton de Kock’s captaincy challenges.
TELFORD VICE in London
IT says something about the maddest, baddest kind of cricket that one of South Africa’s sanest, nicest players is also their most successful captain in the format.
“The difference in captaining in T20s is that you have to try and stay ahead of the game as much as possible,” said Johan Botha, who led South Africa to victory in eight of his 11 T20s at the helm: a better winning percentage than any other skipper.
“That means trying to match up the right bowlers to the right batsmen — if you can.
“When you walk onto the field you should still have a rough plan, and then you make adjustments as you go along. You can’t just guess and make big changes on the field.
“If someone bowls really well on the night he bowls more at the most important phases of the game. If they’re not having their best night someone’s got to make up an over.”
Quinton de Kock will come face-to-face with those truths as South Africa’s captain in their T20 series in India, which starts in Dharamsala next Sunday.
He has a dozen international captaincies to his credit at under-19 and senior level — 10 of them in one-day games. His only experience of leadership in a T20 was in a tour match in Brisbane in November last year.
How did Botha think he would fare?
“In T20 cricket you want to bat in the top three, and he does that really well. He’s also got some good experience in India, which will count for a lot.
“One of the challenges could be in the field. Even though he sees the game at a good angle from behind the stumps, he’s far from his bowlers.
“So he would need a senior bowler or senior player to help with setting the field and getting things in order — especially in the last six overs when the game can get out of hand, when you’re going for runs and it feels like the ball is flying everywhere.
“To run from behind the stumps all the way to the bowler takes time and there’s a lot of focus on the amount of time you have to bowl overs.
“And if you bowl first, to run 10 to 15 times to a bowler and back is going to affect his batting later in the game. It might not for the first 30 or 40 runs, but if he bats past the 10th over in the second innings he’ll feel it.”
Botha also led South Africa in 10 ODIs, winning eight — memorably a 4-1 victory in Australia in January 2009.
“What I really liked about captaining was that it took the focus off my own game.”
Now there’s something for De Kock to look forward to.
First published by the Sunday Times.
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