SA search for Zimbabwe challenge

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Harare

Sometimes, JP Duminy’s lift does not go to the top floor. At the SA team’s Harare hotel this week, it did not even get off the ground. All in a day’s work for an international cricketer, Duminy said yesterday.

“Things don’t always go your way,” he said. “The lifts don’t work, as happened yesterday in the hotel. But those are just the challenges you have to face.”

And, unusually for people whose default focus is on clearing their path of obstacles, SA are looking to keep uppermost whatever challenges they can find as they prepare for one of the least taxing assignments test cricket can throw at them: playing Zimbabwe.

The one-off match at Harare Sports Club starts tomorrow, and the portents look good for a crushing SA victory achieved well inside five days.

Of the seven previous tests the teams have contested, SA have won six, five of them in four or fewer days, and four by an innings.

The exception was the Bulawayo test of September, 2001, when the loss of the second day’s play to rain and the caged cricket SA played - similar to the defensive approach they took in the drawn second test against Sri Lanka in Colombo last month - forced a stalemate.

What with SA re-installed as the No. 1 ranked team, Zimbabwe having won only three of their last 10 tests, and no rain in Harare since May, another hiding seems probable.

But Duminy was determined to keep pushing the buttons of his broken lift metaphor: “To stay on top as the No. 1 ranked team in the world you have to make sure you deal with those situations and respect every team that you play against.”

What Duminy did not say, hopefully because this SA team have internalised it so deeply they are no longer conscious of it, is that their respect for themselves trumps everything.

That has surely driven the decision to retain the squad who won the series in Sri Lanka, even though a game against Zimbabwe is the best chance SA will have to blood new talent. It could also mean minimal tinkering with the XI on Saturday.

“You want to stay as close as possible to the same team,” Duminy said. “You want to build momentum, especially as we aren’t playing too many tests this (World Cup) summer. Once you take your foot off the gas, mother cricket finds you out quite quickly.”

That will not sit well with Zimbabwe’s players, who have resorted to asking the travelling SA press whether Dale Steyn will play or, they hope like hell, be rested.

Unsurprisingly, no such curiosity about the opposition seems to exist on the SA side of the fence. Asked for his thoughts on the home side, Duminy said, “(Brendan) Taylor has been around for a long time. He has been a phenomenal player for them. (Elton) Chigumbura ... (Prosper) Utseya, I think it is, the off-spinner. He has been around as well.”

Duminy did add, however, that SA would do their analysis on Zimbabwe today. That is, of course, if they don’t get stuck in the lift on their way to the team room. Going up ...