Sunday Times
TELFORD VICE in Cape Town
POTCH. It’s an odd contraction of an even odder name for a sweet enough town that used to be the epicentre of a weird and worrying cult called Christian National Education. Happily these days the students are more likely to be drunk on beer than bastardised religious ideas.
History comes to Potch to be made. Founded by the Voortrekkers, part of a Boer republic, where the first shots of the First Boer War were fired, where the British built a concentration camp during the Second Boer War, and the birthplace of Khotso Mokoena and Hezekiel Sepeng … welcome to Potch, population 128 353. A least, it was last year.
Potch is as good a place as any for another auspicious event — the start of Ottis Gibson’s tenure as South Africa’s coach on Thursday. It will be a modest beginning, what with Bangladesh as the opposition.
“I don’t see it that way,” Gibson said. “Bangladesh have beaten England in the last couple of years and Australia just a couple of weeks ago. They’ve come here full of confidence and we need to be ready to meet that challenge.”
It’s taken Bangladesh almost 17 years and 102 tests to achieve 10 victories, but six of them have come in the past four years and three of those — including the victories over England and Australia — since October.
Only two of the 10 wins have been achieved outside the sub-continent: in St Vincent and Harare. One end of that equation is that West Indies and Zimbabwe are among the easier teams to beat. The other is that Caribbean and Zimbabwean surfaces are not unlike Potch’s.
Gibson is right, then, to show the Bangladeshis respect. Especially in the wake of South Africa’s failures this winter.
With Gibson plotting their downfall as England’s bowling coach, South Africa lost three of the four tests.
“Hashim [Amla] and Faf [du Plessis] were the only too really experienced [South Africa] players, and in those conditions, facing [James] Anderson and [Stuart] Broad and all the others, the batsmen struggled,” Gibson said. “It was a battle for Hashim and Faf as well.
“Some of the most experienced players not just in the South African side but also in the England side struggled.”
Amla and Du Plessis will be joined in Potch by Aiden Markram, who will make his debut.
“Fine young player, a very good talent,” was Gibson’s immediate assessment of the 22-year-old opening batsman.
“He’s somebody I’ve heard a lot about. I saw him in the nets in England a couple of times and he looked good.
“It might have been a good thing for him not to play in that series, to face Anderson and Broad so early in his career in their own conditions.”
Markram sealed his selection by scoring 119 in the first innings for the Titans against the Dolphins in Centurion this week. He celebrated with 87 in the second dig.
And he wasn’t the only member of South Africa’s likely top six to make the most of Gibson’s request that as many national players as possible turn out for their franchises in the season’s opening round of first-class fixtures.
“‘Hash’ got a hundred, Dean Elgar got a hundred, Faf got 90-something, Markram got a hundred, Theunis de Bruyn got a hundred … it’s been worthwhile,” Gibson said.
In the absence of the injured Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Chris Morris, the leadership of the attack sits squarely on the albatross-wide shoulders of Morne Morkel.
Given the likely conditions — in Potch and in the second test in Bloemfontein — Keshav Maharaj will be even more prominent than he has become in only 11 tests.
Kagiso Rabada? It’s time for him to bowl like the champion he will be, not the listless figure who has claimed five wickets only once in his last 20 bowling innings. Potchefstroom expects, and deserves, no less.
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