Lies, damned lies, and cricketers

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TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg

Vernon Philander told us stats do not lie. Damn straight. What he did not say was that cricketers lie - do not believe them when they say they have as much use for rankings as they have for a dead cat.

To see the boundless joy that turned South Africa’s hard men into crowing little boys as they tore about stodgy old Lord’s itself on August 20, 2012 in the mad moments after they were confirmed as Test cricket’s top team was to know that is not true.

Clearly, the No. 1 ranking meant a great deal to the players; not as an accolade in splendid isolation from what had happened on the field - they had won the third Test against England on an enthralling last afternoon to clinch the series 2-0 - but as a warm fuzzy symbol of the fruition of hard work.

And why not. In the age of marketing gone mad, even esoteric anachronisms like Test cricket (long may it remain so) have their baubles.

But, just as clearly, losing the mace has hurt South Africa’s feelings. “Can anyone explain how the ICC Test rankings work,” Prasanna Agoram, South Africa’s performance analyst, tweeted last week. “South Africa have lost one series in the last five years and the team that tops the rankings lost 8/10 last year.” Graeme Smith harrumphed in lockstep by retweeting Agoram’s quibbling query.

Australia are the target of Agoram’s ire, but he needs to check his stats. They played 14 Tests last year - won five, lost seven. Whatever, the South Africans are unhappy that the International Cricket Council have decided that the Baggy Greens are a better Test team than the Proteas. By how much? By 0.3505434782609 points. That is not a lot, but it stung here on the sharp tip of Africa.

Not that South Africans had an argument against Australia being regarded as the better of the two teams. They proved themselves in February and March by beating South Africa more convincingly - and in South Africa, no less - than was suggested by the 2-1 series scoreline.

Of course, Agoram knows the answer to his own question. In the same way that a magnifying glass passing above a row of figures will make the numbers it is moving over appear bigger and thus more important, so the rankings are weighted to reflect the effect the passing of time will have on teams’ strengths and weaknesses. The ICC get a lot wrong, but this they have got right.

This is where logic comes in. The South African team who beat England in 2012 were, by any sensible measure, not the team who crumbled against Australia less than two years later. In England, they found a way to win without Mark Boucher’s mongrel spirit. Against Australia, they were asked to do so without Boucher and Jacques Kallis and were then rocked by Smith announcing his retirement during the third Test. Remove, also, Gary Kirsten from the equation and it is difficult to understand how South Africa managed to take a Test off an Australian team reinvented and reinvigorated by their stunning reversal of fortunes in the Ashes.

The kernel of Kirsten’s coaching genius is to get out of the way and allow his teams to be as good as they can be, not to mould them into his idea of what a cricket team should be. As such, even Kirsten would not have been able to halt South Africa’s slide. The kicker is that neither Kallis nor Smith might have retired had Kirsten still been aboard.

“Gary Kirsten had an amazing support team that worked really well,” said Jacques Faul, who served as Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) acting chief executive while South African cricket was trying to pull itself out of the tailspin of the bonus scandal.

“The Proteas were almost like an organisation on their own; they functioned independently. I saw it as my duty to shelter them from the storms, and we were probably in the worst shape ever as an organisation.”

CSA’s credibility had crashed, but somehow Faul signed sponsors and rebuilt bridges with a hostile media. And, of course, the Test team kept winning and became the best in the game. Now, under the aegis of an ostensibly restructured board and with Haroon Lorgat appointed as CSA’s chief executive, the team have slipped.

But it would be unfair to pin the problem on the suits’ lapels. Closer to the truth is that South Africa’s players would need CSA’s board members pointed out to them in a crowded room. Like wicketkeepers and umpires, administrators are noticed only when they cock things up.

CSA’s suits have proved themselves better at doing exactly that than many of their odd ilk, but this time their faces are egg-free.

Pin this one on the players, present and absent, and do not let them tell you any lies.