21 January 2019, by: Rohit Sankar of CricXtasy

Do the Proteas Have a Defensive Mindset?

Remember Adelaide 2012? If you were too young, too old, have amnesia or are an Aussie, this is what transpired:

Faf du Plessis on Test debut denied the Aussies in their backyard with ardent help from a certain AB de Villiers. They did not win the Test. They did not score a truckload of runs. They hadn’t even won the series yet. But they batted time. In 148 overs, South Africa made 248. Du Plessis faced 376 balls for a 110 (No, don’t look at the runs, look at the deliveries). de Villiers faced 220 balls for 33.

What the innings did is tire out the Aussie bowlers so much that none of the three pacers in that game played the next match of the series where the visitors thumped the hosts by a whopping 309 runs to win the series.

Jaw-dropping? A midsummer night’s dream for every Protea fan who had seen decades of Aussie domination across the globe, across tournaments and series? Without a shade of doubt. South Africa’s outrageous effort even earned a name – the blockathon.

The pioneer? Current Test skipper, Faf du Plessis. What is arguably South Africa’s greatest Test innings of the last decade, if not in their entire Test history, could potentially have had a say in their current debacles as a Test unit under du Plessis. No, let’s not place the entire blame on him.

At Cape Town against England, South Africa played out 137.4 overs for exactly 248 runs (yes, so much like at Adelaide). Only, this time they lost. The innings run-rate? 1.80! The fifth worst in a completed Test innings since that Adelaide Test. Not South Africa’s worst, though, as they make an appearance at the top with a team run-rate of 0.99 in 143.1 overs in Delhi 2015, that was also a lost cause.

As brave an effort as these blockathons are, the results haven’t been too encouraging and the mindset has quickly gone down this path every time they find themselves on the back-foot. As South Africa stared at another blockathon effort at Port Elizabeth, former opener Herschelle Gibbs put out a compelling tweet that resonates with South Africa’s demons in Test cricket right now.

Saw this in India on flat wickets with no turn or seam. Its carried on now again. First test in India we got to 400 playing positively.. not sure who saying what but it has to change ASAP.

— Herschelle Gibbs (@hershybru) January 19, 2020

In a reply to a comment that South Africa are way too negative, Gibbs said:

“Saw this in India on flat wickets with no turn or seam. It’s carried on now again. First test in India we got to 400 playing positively. not sure who saying what but it has to change ASAP”.

A look at South Africa’s top-order in positions 1-7 in Tests since 2019 gives a better idea of what has been going on.

Of South Africa’s batsmen, only Quinton de Kock has an average of 30 or more while scoring at a strike rate of 50 or more. The keeper-batsman has been excellent – even if at times fans have scoffed at his decision making like when he decided to take on Root’s seemingly innocuous off-breaks at St George’s Park – in Tests, making two of the only four tons South Africa have in Tests since 2019.

Importantly, he has been the only one who has offered the opposition bowlers a challenge. None of the other batsmen have batted long enough and at a good enough strike rate (as evident from the poor averages even when the strike rate is over 50) to put the opposition under pressure. This has been true even before 2019. The difference then was that de Villiers was present to control the tempo of an innings and to ensure that the opposition were never on top in those times – he averaged over 50 and scored at a rate of over 60 since 2018.

Among Test nations, South Africa’s team strike rate of 48.38 is the fourth worst in Tests after England, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe. While England have been poor in the longest format – which makes the current series even more dreadful for the Proteas – Zimbabwe and Afghanistan aren’t the strongest in Tests and South Africa’s strike rate shows a very defensive mindset that clearly hasn’t panned out well.

A team batting average of 23.76 and four hundreds from 214 player innings’ reveal everything that’s wrong with South Africa in plain simple statistical terms. Two of those tons came in the same Test innings which further says a bit about their woes in other Tests. The batting has failed South Africa time and again. Since the start of the India tour in 2019, South Africa’s scores at loss of 4th wicket in Tests are: 63, 52, 41, 71,107, 26, 97, 62, 157,164, 71 and 66.

In nine out of 12 innings, they have lost four wickets before a team score of 100, a telling stat about how the top-order has been found wanting. But why do we pinpoint on their defensive approach?

Let’s dig deeper about this over-cautious approach. Since that Adelaide Test, here’s a look at South Africa’s worst innings run-rates in Tests. The average Test innings considering all Test matches goes at a run-rate of 3.22 in the post-Adelaide 2012 time frame. We will place a buffer and filter out all of South Africa’s completed Test innings at a run-rate of 2.75 or lower.

There have been 26 Test innings from South Africa in the said time period where the team run-rate has been 2.75 or below. Except in seven of those innings, South Africa went on to lose each of the respective Test matches. They won just two matches – one against Zimbabwe, one on a low Galle wicket against Sri Lanka – whereas they lost 12 matches (eliminating innings from same Tests).

In fourth innings of Tests, South Africa tried the blockathon nine more times and were successful just once – against Sri Lanka at Colombo six years ago.

It just goes on to show how a defensive mindset has hurt South Africa in Tests. With no de Villiers in the setup now, and de Kock well set at no. 7, the top-order sorely lacks an impact player who can come out and change the direction of winds when the opposition are on top.

Of late, the only South African to do so is de Villiers in the home Test against India in 2018. Walking in at 12 for 3 after Bhuvneshwar Kumar went on a rampage, de Villiers flayed 11 boundaries, including four in a Bhuvneshwar over, in a knock of 65 off 84 balls. It changed the momentum of the innings and eventually paved for a South Africa win with that first innings score being the highest team total in the Test.

That kind of impact is missing in the current Proteas outfit where the first resolution to a crisis is going into a shell and not coming lifting your head out of it. The solution lies in investing in more youth talent as England showed them at Port Elizabeth where they played five players younger than South Africa’s youngest player.

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