SA bowling coach job is Langeveldt’s, says Ntini

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

WOULD Makhaya Ntini want to be SA’s next bowling coach? Yes. Does he think he will be SA’s next bowling coach? No.

“Why not,” Ntini said when he was asked if he would be keen on the position, which became vacant this week when Allan Donald declined to renew his contract with Cricket SA (CSA).

Did Ntini have the relevant coaching certificates?

“You don’t need qualifications if you’ve bowled at international level - that’s all you need.”

And bowl at international level Ntini certainly did: all of 29 221 deliveries in his 101 tests, 172 one-day internationals and 10 T20s for SA.

But he was convinced he would not be back in the dressingroom anytime soon, not even in a tracksuit.

“That job will never go to me,” Ntini said. “They’ve got Langeveldt there already.”

Charl Langeveldt served as SA’s death bowling consultant during West Indies’ tour last season and at the World Cup. The impact he made is difficult to measure. But the shortlist of viable candidates in SA is too short to even be a list, at least among those at franchise level.

Asked if he would be interested, the only other realistic option in the category, Dolphins head coach Lance Klusener, gave a short, sharp answer: “No.”

So Langeveldt, who is currently with the Cobras but has indicated his availability for the national post, may be the right man for the job by virtue of being the only man in the right place at the right time.

That’s without considering left field choices like Fanie de Villiers or Shaun Pollock, neither of whom have been active in high level domestic coaching structures, or Donald’s predecessor, Vincent Barnes, who is now CSA’s high performance manager.

They all have strong and weak points. But, fine fast bowler that he was, Donald himself cannot claim to have presided over the rise of any of SA’s current attack. So, what makes a good international coach?

“You need credibility because a lot, at that level, is about influence,” former SA coach Eric Simons said. “You have to find solutions with the bowler; he needs to buy into them.”

Not that there was a shortage of people who thought they had what it took to keep bowlers on the straight and narrow.

“I hear commentators saying things like, ‘He’s falling over at the crease’,” Simons said. “That’s the easy bit - the difficult part of coaching is fixing it. Identifying a problem is commentating; fixing it is coaching.”

Like Klusener, Simons ruled himself out of the running to step into Donald’s boots. Who, then, might be a good choice?

“It’s maybe not the obvious person,” Simons said. “Someone like Shane Bond seems to have done a good job.”

There would be a touch of the trivia question about Bond replacing Donald as both would have signed up with SA after serving as New Zealand’s bowling coach at the most recent World Cup. But Bond would seem to be off the international market.

“When you’re away 200, 250 days a year it’s certainly demanding,” was how Bond explained his decision to reject the contract extension New Zealand Cricket offered him in January and instead threw in his lot with Mumbai Indians.

“That’s not to say I don’t love the role but now I’ve got a gig where I can still do the job I love and get that time at home.”

Langeveldt said no such thing. He wants the job and he already has some of it. Now for the difficult bit ...