Domingo is not Kirsten and that’s just fine

Gocricket.com - http://www.gocricket.com/Domingo-is-not-Kirsten-and-thats-just-fine/Telford%20Vice/columnshow/32837842.cms

TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg *

Russell Domingo is getting sick of being treated like Gary Kirsten’s talentless, feckless younger brother. You know the type: lucky to be born into the clan and hopelessly unsuited to being part of the family business.

Yes, you can hear Domingo screaming silently to himself at press conferences, we know that Kirsten wins World Cups. Yes, he takes teams to the number one ranking. But, no, he is not some sort of genius - unless we count his gift for taking his own ego out of the way to allow teams to play to their potential.

Kirsten is human. Domingo is human. Now, would the rest of us humans get the hell out of the way and allow Domingo to coach what is now his team, whether we like it or not?

No, we can’t. Because we know - or we think they know - that Domingo does not deserve to zip up Kirsten’s tracksuit top. It doesn’t matter a jot that Domingo has been coaching for 17 of his 39 years, or that he has earned his respect at all levels, including in South Africa’s franchise system, where he turned the Warriors into a competitive team and won two trophies in six seasons. Or even that - as Kirsten’s assistant - a share of the credit for South Africa’s rise to the top of the Test rankings belongs to Domingo.

Instead, what matters is that Domingo never played first-class cricket, nevermind adorned the international stage. Does it also matter that he is not white? Who will admit that?

But what seems to matter most is this: Domingo is not Kirsten. Therefore he is not good enough to coach South Africa.

This absurdity survives and prospers without taking into account what the removal from the equation of Mark Boucher, Jacques Kallis and now Graeme Smith in less than two years would do to any team.

It also ignores the fact that Kirsten focused on building South Africa’s stature as a Test team. Something had to give, and that something was performance in the shorter formats - which South Africans have come to expect their team to dominate even though all they have to brag about is a sole trophy won in 1998.

But kick a kitbag anywhere in South Africa and you will find a Domingo doubter. By the look of him after South Africa found creative ways to turn what should have been a walkover win against the Netherlands into an exciting game of cricket in their World T20 match in Chittagong on Thursday, the dressingroom itself was crawling with them.

“If we stick with the same line-up, people say we do the same things over and over; if we change it, people say we change it too much,” Domingo said. “We are a strange cricket nation. If we win two or three games comfortably, people accuse us of peaking at the wrong time. If we win two close games, people say we are playing badly.”

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. Domingo isn’t the first coach to have to step out of the shadow of a notable predecessor - David Moyes could tell him a thing or two about that - and as a staunch Manchester United supporter himself he knows that there is only one way to make the noise stop: win.

Indeed, having endured a mauling at home at the hands of the Australians this season, and after a loss and two tight wins at the WT20, the natives are even more restless than usual.

That Kirsten’s South African team lost 12 of their 29 one-day internationals - comfortably under their alltime winning percentage of 61.51 - and half of their 18 T20s doesn’t register as a comparative factor in this debate.

Which is not to say Domingo gets it all right all the time. If he did, he wouldn’t be under pressure. For a start - and you’ve read it here before as you will do until it is no longer the case - AB de Villiers should bat at number three in T20s. Anywhere lower, as is currently the case, and he is wasted.

But there is an unfair refrain blowing from the pundits all the way through to the public in South African cricket. Sometimes it is honest, mostly it is a snotty insinuation. It is that Domingo is part of the problem with the team, not the solution.

South Africans need to know that Domingo is used to being unfashionable, that he can take criticism, and that he doesn’t mind his credit being given to others. However, he will not be pushed around. He will push back. We have been warned.

* Not in Bangladesh