SA will face sternest T20 test in India

“If our batsmen don’t have a touch game to go with their power game they will struggle.” Herschelle Gibbs on South Africa’s T20 series in India next month.

TELFORD VICE in London

T20 cricket is supposed to be all about surprises, but it isn’t especially noteworthy that South Africa’s men’s team have lost more than 60% of their games against India.

Neither is it news that they have nothing to show for the fact that they have won close on 60% of all their T20s.

The format seems bespoke for the Indians’ confident, dramatic style of play, and it doesn’t hurt that the country is home to T20’s biggest, boldest, brashest bash annually.

And if the Saffers are playing in the tournament tell the taxi to come back well before the final to take them to the airport. So far, anyway.

It won’t make South Africans feel any better about all that to know that the champions in four of the six editions of what will be called the T20 World Cup next year have been won by sides who have been successful in less than half their matches: England, West Indies — twice — and Sri Lanka.

Those teams have also lost more than half of their T20s against South Africa. Worse yet, in trophy terms, of the 54 other sides who have played T20s at international level only India and Pakistan — the other two world champions — and Afghanistan are more successful in the format overall than the South Africans.

Their next attempt to change all that starts in Dharamsala three weeks from Sunday, when their opponents in the first of three T20s will be those confident, dramatic Indians.

Next stop home for three against England and three more against Australia, all of them in February.

Then it’s off to Australia for the T20 World Cup, where South Africa’s first game is in Perth on October 24 — against India, who will be supported to the rafters by their 40 000 compatriots who the Aussie tourism authorities estimate will turn up for the tournament.

Considering 15 000 Indians travelled to Australia for the 2015 World Cup, and that it looked and sounded like Virat Kohli’s side were the only team in town when they played South Africa in Melbourne, the prospect of more than double that number arriving next year is arresting.

It also lends weight to next month’s rubber, which despite not matching what will be on offer at the T20 World Cup in terms of conditions will nonetheless provide the sternest test the South Africans will face before the tournament.

Of their squad, only Quinton de Kock — the captain for the series — David Miller and Kagiso Rabada have played T20 internationals in India.

But between them the 14 selected have appeared 164 times in the big, bold, brash bash above, the Indian Premier League (IPL). That said, De Kock and Miller own 134 games of the collective experience and only six players have made it to the IPL.

That cut no ice with Herschelle Gibbs: “There’s no more excuses to play poorly in Indian conditions what with all the experience of IPL cricket.”

So, what do South Africa need to do to improve their success rate in India?

“If they can’t rotate the strike against the spinners they’re going to be in trouble,” Gibbs said. “That’s been our biggest issue going there.

“Also, if our batsmen don’t have a touch game to go with their power game they will struggle.”

It will hearten South Africans that the leading run-scorer in T20s this year among all the players on both sides is Reeza Hendricks, and that 2019’s top wicket-taker in the format in both squads is Andile Phehlukwayo.

But that’s a crude way to try and make sense of the most rapidly evolving form of the game, where margins between teams and players are shrinking so much and so fast.

It’s a bit like designing a new anti-theft device for cars today, and watching car thieves crack it tomorrow.

Now there’s a surprise.

First published by the Sunday Times.