Form follows function in selectors’ minds

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg

If form mattered more than anything else in the national selectors’ discussions ahead of SA’s tour to Sri Lanka in July, places in the squad would have to be found for Stiaan van Zyl, Dane Piedt, Heino Kuhn and Hardus Viljoen.

Justin Ontong, Simon Harmer, Henry Davids and Craig Alexander would also have a case for selection if players were picked purely on performance.

Those eight cricketers either topped or were second on the runscoring or the wicket-taking charts in the franchise first-class and one-day competitions last summer.

Van Zyl has the patience to succeed on slow pitches, Ontong would add a dash of freshness along with his experience, Piedt and Harmer are both spinners - yes, the top two bowlers in SA last summer were not seamers - international cricket is new to neither Kuhn nor Davids, and the pace packed by Viljoen and Alexander would make the Lankans’ heads spin.

Nevertheless, eyebrows would remain unraised should none of them make the cut for the two tests and three one-day internationals SA will play on the Asian island. Conversely, if one of them cracks the nod, explanations would be offered before they are requested.

The gap in standards between domestic and international cricket makes selectors hesitant to take franchise performances at face value, but personality can get in the way of progress.

“Sometimes the guys already in the national team stick together and it’s all rah-rah in the dressingroom, and they don’t want someone new coming in,” Mike Procter said yesterday. “But the dream must never die. It must never be harder to get out of the side than into the side.”

However, another former selector, Hugh Page, said facts and figures could obscure greater truths.

“Bob Willis used to frustrate Warwickshire because he would perform better for England than he did for his county, and David Miller hasn’t set the world alight in domestic cricket in SA but in the Indian Premier League (IPL) he is one of the most successful foreign players,” Page said.

Some of Willis’ first-class statistics for Warwickshire, 353 wickets at an average of 24.84, compare favourably to his England record - 325 at 25.20. But he played 46 more games for Warwickshire than he did tests, and he will forever be remembered for taking 8/43 to bowl England to an unlikely victory in the 1981 Ashes test at Headingley.

Miller, meanwhile, has scored six half-centuries and a century in 23 innings for the Kings XI Punjab. He has batted 15 more times for the Dolphins than in the IPL, but has only seven 50s to show for his efforts.

Or, as Page said, “When it comes to analysing players, there’s no comments column - there’s only a stats column.”

Procter was SA’s convenor of selectors from December, 2008 to January, 2010. JP Duminy, Wayne Parnell, Lonwabo Tsotsobe and Ryan McLaren all became test players on his panel’s watch, and Roelof van der Merwe was capped at one-day level.

How closely did Procter and his selectors stay in touch with what was happening on the domestic scene?

“We took it very seriously,” he said. “That was one of our key considerations, if not the key consideration. It’s vital that the guys playing franchise cricket know that they have as good a chance of playing for SA as anyone else.”

Van Zyl, Piedt, Kuhn, Viljoen, Ontong, Harmer, Davids and Alexander will hope that still holds true.