SA seek settled batting lineup in Zimbabwe

Next Friday Shaun Pollock's South Africans start their first Test match of the summer in Harare against Zimbabwe. Come April 9 next year, South Africa will have played in 11 Test matches and comfortably over 20 One-Day Internationals against countries as diverse as Kenya, India, Australia, New Zealand and, of course, Zimbabwe.

You're talking about something approaching 80 days of international cricket in one season. Think about this. During the 1960s and leading up to isolation after the 1970 visit of Bill Lawry's Australians, South Africa played 35 Test matches. In other words the maximum expected of this schedule over a decade (allowing for each Test to run its full course of five days) was 175 days. You get tired just thinking about what the current lot will have to do over the next few months.

But, of course, this season is not simply about quantity. The back-to-back, home-and-away series against Australia amount to cricket's heavyweight championship of the world. Whoever wins can rightly claim the title of the current world champions and even as Pollock and company head off to Harare, this thought is bound to preoccupy the minds of the South Africans.

The task for Pollock, Graham Ford and Corrie van Zyl, then, is to persuade the South Africans all along the way to focus on the challenge immediately at hand. In other words, let's beat Zimbabwe; then let's beat India; and then we can start thinking about Steve Waugh and Shane Warne and the rest of them.

Easier said than done, though, especially as the Test matches against Zimbabwe and India will serve to shape the side that eventually takes on Australia. From this distance, the Tests against Australia appear to loom as a confrontation between South Africa's bowlers and Australia's batsmen.

This is neither to disparage the South African batting, nor to underestimate the threat posed by Warne and Glenn McGrath, but it does take into account the fact the Australia battered England into submission during the Ashes series by consistently scoring at four runs to the over or better.

Will they be able to achieve the same dominance against a South African attack once again led by Allan Donald remains to be seen, but to ensure that this contest is played out on at least vaguely even terms, South Africa first have to sort out their batting.

And that's why the Zimbabwe tour is so important to this summer. To be perfectly blunt about it, South Africa need to fix upon a settled batting lineup, stretching from three to six with everyone in the order settled, secure and clear about his responsibilties.

The uncertainty about Jonty Rhodes and Daryll Cullinan complicates matters, but as it stands at the moment, Rhodes has again expressed his reluctance to play Test cricket while Cullinan's past record in Australia does little to guarantee him a third tour.

So the immediate challenge is to start fitting the blocks together with the current available materials. Gary Kirsten and Herchelle Gibbs should continue to open because they work well together, they complement each other and, most importantly, the opening partnership is one of the parts of the team that isn't broken. No attempt should be made to fix it.

Through the West Indies tour, Jacques Kallis played an increasingly important role as a bowler and the time may now be right to shift him down the order, say to five. It is entirely true that the number three position troubled South Africa for several years before Kallis made it his own, but Boeta Dippenaar presents himself as a viable alternative.

Dippenaar has made only sporadic appearances in the national side, but he has never looked out of his depth, is an authentic number three and deserves, at the very least, an extended run in the team.

With Kallis at five, Neil McKenzie slots in at four and the number six place should go to Lance Klusener with Pollock and Mark Boucher arm-wrestling to see who bats seven and eight.

For Klusener, particularly, and to a lesser extent Boucher, this summer presents an opportunity to make up ground lost in the West Indies. Klusener had a horrible tour, his confidence seeping away each time he approached the crease, but perhaps most importantly, he needs to redefine his place in the team.

He burst into the Test side, with startling effect, as a fast bowler nearly five years ago, but it is as a batsman who can bowl that his future lies. For all the slump in his shoulders in the Caribbean, he is quite possibly only one decent innings away from rediscovering his form.

Klusener at his best is psychologically important to South Africa. He can tear an attack apart and although the West Indies contained him with slow bowlers on slow pitches, the surfaces he plays on this summer are much more likely to allow him to express himself.

The same applies to Boucher who fell below his own standards in the West Indies. Again, though, truer surfaces should allow his confidence to return, both behind the stumps and at the crease. And if he recaptures his best, Pollock can happily install himself at number eight to have a blaze if and when the situation demands it.

There are, of course, other questions to be answered about the combination employed by South Africa. Who of Makhaya Ntini, Mfuneko Ngam, Andre Nel or Nantie Hayward will be the third seamer in Australia? Can Claude Henderson do well enough in Zimbabwe to give Nicky Boje a fight for the spinner's berth.

But, most importantly, South Africa need to get the batting sorting out. They have five Test matches before Australia in which to do so. With a bit of luck, that should be enough.