Phangiso the new pap propping up SA’s vleis

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

PAUL Harris lived a secret life during his 37 tests and three one-day caps for SA, all of them earned as the pap in an attack not short on vleis.

“It’s strange because I am an inherently impatient person,” Harris said. “The only time I was patient, my wife tells me, was when I was bowling.

“A lot of times, I would come on when a team would be 100/1. I would get the wicket and Dale Steyn would come back on. I never really bowled to new batsmen; I always seemed to bowl to guys who had faced 100 balls.

“The guys in the side often gave me the credit that I wanted and that I needed. You get a pat on the back from Dale when he takes a wicket and he says, ‘Jeepers, thanks bud - that was half yours’.

“That’s almost as rewarding as getting it yourself. Not quite, but almost.

“I enjoyed it, it was a lekker challenge. But it would have been nice to have been told, every now and again, ‘Let your hair down and have some fun’.”

No-one would say that to Aaron Phangiso, and not only because he shaves his head. He is, in a one-day sense at least, what Harris was: the pap propping up the vleis, the spinner who shall not spin lest it means he concedes runs.

Phangiso has used flight and guile to take 10 wickets in the six ODIs he has played on SA’s tour to Zimbabwe, discounting Saturday’s’s triangular series final. Nine of those victims are respected batsmen. Better yet, Phangiso has kept his economy rate under four.

Imran Tahir’s economy rate has crept above four in his five ODIs in Zimbabwe before Saturday, and he had nine wickets. As a leg spinner, Tahir is an attacking option.

But, since the halcyon days of Hugh Tayfield in the 1950s, SA’s conservative cricket culture has preferred its spinners to be misers. No amount of chakra opening by the Gary Kirstens and Paddy Uptons of the world will change that.

Dane Piedt, an off-spinner, replaced Tahir in the test against Zimbabwe in Harare last month and took 8/152 - the best figures by a SA spinner on debut.

So, should the apparently foolish fantasy of augmenting SA’s attack with an overtly aggressive spinner be abandoned?

“We do need a guy to keep it tight so our seamers can charge in from the other end,” Harris said. “But that doesn’t mean we should not look for someone who can do both jobs. Imagine if we had Graeme Swann? We would be unstoppable.”

Besides, what constitutes wicket-taking spin is debatable.

“I’d like to think I’m attacking because I try to set attacking fields and get the ball in the air,” former SA left-arm spinner Robin Peterson said. “That encourages batsmen to play shots, and I try to get my wickets that way.

“Being attacking is not about being a wrist spinner. It’s about your mentality, that’s more important.

“With the new ODI regulations and one fielder up, I don’t think any spinner is not attacking. Even if the wicket is turning, the batsmen are looking to play shots.”

Piedt himself prefers to sniff the air for wickets, as does Simon Harmer, the off-spinner Piedt has kept out of the test squad.

But it is spinners like Phangiso, who bowls in the footmarks of Tayfield and Harris and a host of others, that South Africans trust. They want pap from those who twirl to tantalise and tease, not vleis.