Cronje batting to find the right formula (6 June 1999)

6 June 1999

Cronje batting to find the right formula

Trevor Chesterfield

Nottingham (England) - South Africa may have been reinstated as World Cup favourites but there is some serious head scratching going on about the continuing failure of the top-order as they spend the next few days pondering a remedy to put runs on the boa rd.

There are four days to the game against New Zealand at Edgbaston, but forget the thought of Allan Donald's 'homecoming' to his county base of Edgbaston revitalising the fast bowler's own fortunes. What is bothering the skipper Hansie Cronje and coach Bob Woolmer is sorting out the run-making formula.

Both men have admitted that it is far from easy. And they have taken some flak over the continual failure of Gary Kirsten and Herschelle Gibbs along with Jonty Rhodes being unable to get runs next to his name.

It may be an irritation but the way the top six have continually buckled, and at times against average bowling, is going to draw criticism. South Africa's public, known for their fickle judgement when a team is losing, need to also be aware how form probl ems can affect a player's confidence. Even Rhodes has not, in the past, escaped from probing comment on his batting skills.

And what is bothering Cronje and Woolmer is that apart from the match against India at Hove, on May 15, Rhodes has not had a happy World Cup. What is more alarming is his two successive lbw failures: scoring five against Zimbabwe in Chelmsford and now the duck against Pakistan. On both occasions he 'missed a straight one'.

While assistant coach Graham Ford has been working with Rhodes and has in the past helped him overcome his habit of moving around too much in the crease, the batsman seems to have fallen into a similar trap in the past three matches of the World Cup.

As it is Cronje's concern over the lack of the top-order to put runs on the board forced the captain to shuffle the order around against the searing early pace of Shoaib Akhtar. Not known to bee too comfortable against anything as quick as the 95 mph deli very he faced first ball up.

'We have not batted at all well at times and I decided, after the experience against Zimbabwe to come in higher up the order because we needed to change things around,' he said.

'It was important for us to get some momentum going after that (Zimbabwe) disappointment,' he added.

While it may not have had the required affect, what it did do was focus attention on Jacques Kallis' ability to put a half-century of quality together under pressure and take the heat of Shoaib, who for all his pace is, as Cronje pointed out, not as exper ienced internationally to be as dangerous as say Waqar Younis.

"Look, as he grows older and more mature he will learn more about fast bowling. At the moment he is not experienced. When Waqar was playing he gave you nothing to hit at the end of an innings,' the South African captain said.

He expressed feeling 'comfortable about chasing a score of 220 because the pitch is a good one,' but there are other considerations and one has been the number of times pressure has been placed on Lance Klusener to take the burden of run-scoring on his sh oulders in the latter part of the innings. As at Chelmsford Shaun Pollock could not be criticised for his stabilising efforts with Kallis in their partnership of 77.

Cronje was also quiet happy to retain the World Cup squad which, unless there is a serious change of thinking, leave Dale Benkenstein waiting to make his debut as it is his view the side 'can really excel from now ' (after the win over Pakistan). Which is an interesting way of looking at it..

'Over the next few days we have to work on our batting: not in a technical sense but mentally we have to come to terms with expressing ourselves,' was Cronje's judgement of how he sees South Africa at this stage of the tournament Today they are tipped at 7/5 favourites but this can shorten further should Pakistan lose to India at Old Trafford in Manchester tomorrow.

Source :: Trevor Chesterfield