Times Media - March 4 2014
TELFORD VICE, Cape Town
Ray Jennings accomplished what no other SA coach at any level has done when his team won the under-19 World Cup at the weekend. Despite that, he spoke like a man in need of a job yesterday.
Cricket SA chief executive Haroon Lorgat said at Newlands yesterday that the organisation would redesign its junior structures, and that he “looks forward to Ray’s future involvement”.
However, Jennings, SA’s under-19 coach since 2006, was uncertain what that might mean for him.
“It does concern me,” Jennings said when asked whether or not he would retain his position. “I need to know where I’m going. I’ve been loyal to SA but if people don’t want you, you’ve got to pack up and move on.”
Lorgat said details of the restructure would be completed in the next two months.
Jennings was less equivocal about the performance of his team at the tournament, which they won by beating Pakistan by six wickets in the final in Dubai on Saturday.
“This side has taught me a few things as a coach,” he said. “They were always on the same wavelength as me.”
Jennings, who has a reputation for drilling his teams hard, described working with his squad as a “breath of fresh air” and said the players had “given me a kick-start”.
“They worked hard, took advice from senior people and moved the process forward. We had the best 12th, 13th, 14th men. They analysed for hours. When we went to watch a game against teams we were going to play against, everybody took notes all day.”
SA won all five of their matches on their way to the final, earned six man-of the match awards, and scooped the player-of-the-tournament prize. That went to captain Aiden Markram, the only player in the event to score two centuries, whose 123.33 topped the averages.
Aside from the highlights of winning the final and lifting the trophy, Markram listed beating Australia in the semi-final as a special memory because, “there’s a rivalry and a history there”.
As he spoke, the senior Australian team were writing the next chapter of that history on the third day of the final test against SA at Newlands - where Markram’s team had been flown to celebrate their victory with the crowd and, perchance, take the edge off what looks like an impending beating for Graeme Smith’s team.
During the tea interval, with the sun glinting off their trophy and carried by the applause of an audience grown weary of the Aussies’ dominance of the test, the under-19s, smartly dressed in their number ones, did a languid lap of honour of the ground.
They looked comfortable in their triumph, an unusual sight for South Africans used to their teams’ failure to launch when it matters.
“If you don’t compete you’ll never choke,” Jennings said. “But this wasn’t that type of side; we were going to walk on water.
“We’ve played the best. We are the best. We’ve done something right.”
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