South Africa in a spin!!

 

Once again South Africa's inability to cope with spin and leg spin in particular has led them to a test and T20 series defeat against Pakistan.

This has been an age old problem for South Africa.  Whether its been Shane Warne, Anil Kumble, Stuart Macgill, Mushtaq Ahmed, Danish Kaneria and now Yasir Shah, South Africa have constantly battled against leg spin in particular.  

Lets face it, it's not easy to go to the subcontinent and face spin.  One just has to look how Ravi Ashwin and Axar Patel recently destroyed England in the second test in Chennai, but for South Africa it has been an ongoing problem and is a problem that needs to be sorted out if we ever wish to become number 1 in the world again.

Covid 19 has not helped and SA didn't have the time to prepare adequately for the Pakistan tour and with Covid set to be with us for some time still, a bit of thinking out the box maybe necessary. Unfortunately it's not just test cricket, Pakistan's spinners were the difference in the T20 series as well. SA were good against the quicks, but as soon as the likes of of Zahid Mahmood, Mohammad Nawaz and Usman Qadir were introduced, the games turned Pakistan's way.  

One of South Africa's biggest problems is that our local conditions are not geared towards spin and we don't face enough quality spinners on slow turning tracks to prepare properly.  A change of mindset is needed.

We saw this past weekend in the CSA T20 league how teams battled against Keshav Maharaj on a slightly slow Kingsmead wicket.  In 3 games Maharaj has taken 6 wickets at a ridiculous average of 7.5 at less than 4 runs per over.  Perhaps the time has come to expose our batsmen to more of these conditions so that we can improve our play

against spin, help us to become a more all-rounded team and ultimately reach the summit of world cricket again.

It wasn't that long ago that India were seen as a sub continent only team that could not deal with the faster, bouncier wickets in SA, Australia and England.  Their recent series win in Australia against arguably one of the best fast bowling units in world cricket shows how far they have come and is proof that with a change of mindset and the right preparation anything is possible.