South Africa got it right in naming Smith as skipper

FIRST of all I owe an apology to Graeme Smith, the 22-year-old captain of South Africa. And I am delighted to offer it. I had poured scorn on his appointment and had even questioned whether he was good enough to earn a place in the team.

I was utterly wrong and it was a rush to judgement. Considering that the appointment had been made amid the disappointment and bad-temper of South Africa crashing out of the World Cup one had felt that the South Africans had over-reacted. But they had got it right.

Smith is an aggressive young man and both the style of his captaincy and batting has a freshness about it and he could easily become the most exciting cricketer around.

The Edgbaston Test showed that on a good wicket, neither South Africa nor England has the bowling to get the 20 wickets needed to win a Test. Both teams have strong batting line-ups, neither has a top quality spinner and there is a much of muchness about the fast bowling.

It is late in the season in England and one of the venues may produce a wicket that may prove to be more bowler-friendly and we might get a result. I write this with a day still to spare in the first Test and England still needs a few runs to save the follow-on but, badly affected by the weather, the Test seems headed for a draw.

But South Africa will go into the next Test, starting at Lord’s, with their tails up. South Africa had fallen by the wayside in the NatWest triangular tournament and it seemed unlikely that it could have picked itself up.

South Africa was without Jacques Kallis whose father, sadly died. Yet Smith had no hesitation in batting after winning the toss, bucking the tradition at Edgbaston and then went out to open the innings with a badly out-of-form Herschelle Gibbs.

In the first session the decorum of a Test match was maintained but once the two had got their eyes in, there followed a partnership that went on and on and the runs kept piling on. It was breathtaking batting. Gibbs found his form at the right time. Gibbs is a batsman who is prepared to take risks and whose concentration has mood-swings, it seems to lapse at the most unlikely time but he’s a class act.

To have linked arms with the calibre of a batsman like Gibbs and not to dwarfed, takes some doing and the South African captain matched him shot by shot. This was quality batting, mostly out of the text-book with none of the hustle of the one-day game.

Records tumbled and there was much excitement among South African supporters at the prospect of Smith becoming the first South African to make a triple century in a Test. It was not to be as he ran out of steam.

I hope that we in Pakistan are taking notes for it will not be long before the South Africans will be playing in Pakistan. Ashley Giles is not a good enough spinner to have exploited an apparent weakness against spin.

I don’t know whether Saqlain Mushtaq is in contention for a Test place, or whether Mushtaq Ahmed is likely to be in the frame. He has had a good county season and is obviously fit. But he’s been out of the team for a long time. This is not a disqualification but I would imagine that if we go with a leg-spinner, it will be Danish Kaneria.

Pakistan has a good pace attack but it needs to be augmented with high quality spin. There’s still a lot cricket to be played in the Test series and it remains to be seen if the South African batting can keep on getting the huge totals because it certainly does not have the bowling to match its batting and that is why I feel that England are in with more than a chance.

I had written last week that the worst was behind Bangladesh after the first Test and one expected a much better performance in the second Test. This is precisely what has happened. Cricket is a mind game and the fear-factor plays an important role. If you refuse to be intimidated by the awesome reputation of your opponent then the opponent is likely to be less of a bully.

I think Bangladesh will be able to go home with some pride to show. It wasn’t a first-round knock-out as everyone expected it to be. How much this improved showing is due to the coach Dav Whatmore is anybody’s guess.

But a coach can only do so much and it is up to the players themselves. They are the ones who are out there in the middle. There is no doubt in my mind that the Bangladeshi players will be toughened by the experience. And I certainly look forward to it touring Pakistan next month.

That too will be a tough series but Bangladesh will be playing in more familiar conditions and in a friendlier environment and certainly no one among our ex-Test players nor our media is likely to poor scorn on the minnows of cricket.

For a long time, Pakistan carried the tag of “babes of cricket”. The only way of getting rid of the tag was to start winning. Pakistan too had its Test credentials questioned and indeed the book that Abdul Hafeez Kardar wrote on Pakistan’s tour of England in 1954 was titled Test Status On Trial.

It was Pakistan’s famous win at The Oval when England was “Fazalled” that had shut the mouths of the detractors. Bangladesh will have to engineer this kind of a historic victory and I would very much doubt that it will be able to do so against Pakistan.

Pakistan cricket may be in a rebuilding stage but there still is a lot of fire-power available. And Pakistan will be mindful that it plays South Africa next and will seek to get its act together rather than use the Bangladesh tour to make experiments and use the Tests as trial matches.

I have written this before and repeat that Pakistan must play its best team as the Australians did.