South Africa hold the trumps (15 January 1999)

15 January 1999

South Africa hold the trumps

The Trinidad Express

Nothing has caused the West Indies more torment since the end of their 15 years of Test invincibility than the search for top-order reliabilty in their batting and wicketkeeping.

They have seemingly solved the latter problem with the belated introduction of Ridley Jacobs on an otherwise disastrous South African tour. The quest for the former remains futile and continues today with a new combination in the final Test in which the incentive is the avoidance of the absolute-and for the West Indies, unique-debacle of a 5-0 defeat.

The day after his 20th birthday, Daren Ganga, the scholarly Trinidadian from the southern town of Barrackpore, will become the tenth batsman specifically chosen to open the West Indies innings in the past six years-not including those drafted in during a match because of injury or illness.

Ganga's promotion from No.6, where his technique and temperament have both been encouragingly sound in his first Test series, will be complemented by the placement of Stuart Williams at No.3 with Philo Wallace retained at No.1.

It may be asking a boy to do a man's job but, even if he has achieved little statistically on his first tour, Ganga has shown that it will not intimate him.

"We've got to have some sort of a cushion between the top of the order and the middle," manager Clive Lloyd explained. "Our key batsmen have been invariably coming in when the ball is new and hard and the fast bowlers are still fresh. We're looking to this to be a solution."

In the previous four Tests, the average for the West Indies first-wicket partnership is 14.12, for the second it is 15.63. It has meant Shivnarine Chanderpaul and captain Brian Lara usually coming in before the score is 30 to face immediate pressure from South Africa's high-class new ball pair, Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock.

The West Indies arrived in South Africa optimistic that the aggression of their latest first-wicket pair, Wallace and the left-handed Clayton Lambert, would be the ideal antidote to the South African pace. In their previous two Tests together, against England in the Caribbean, they added 82, 72 and 167 but their association lasted only one Test here.

Wallace had to miss the second with glandular fever and, by the time he returned for the third, Lambert had been dropped in favour of Junior Murray who had no previous experience of opening in first-class cricket. Now the foolhardy Murray experiment has ended and Williams is recalled.

Wallace's self-confidence was high following his outstanding Wills International Cup One-day series in Bangladesh in October where he scored a hundred against South Africa in the final and averaged 80 all told. Both Donald and Pollock were missing in Bangladesh and they have returned to expose the unorthodox methods and techniques of both the tall Barbadian and Lambert. But he remains a dangerous hitter when on song and he could provide the spark to the innings, as he and Lambert did against England.

It is a critical match for Wallace and Williams who are both battling to save their Test careers. Both have previously had the trauma of the selectors' rejection slip, Williams several times, and both know that there are those back home waiting to bust out of the regional Busta Cup tournament to claim a place against the Australians.

As it is, Williams's return was in some doubt last night. He was treated for an unspecified condition that manager Lloyd said is causing discomfort in his toes. Left-hander Floyd Reifer was included in the squad as cover.

It is the batting, which has failed to pass 300 in eight innings, that has got the West Indies into their present mess-as it did in Pakistan late in 1997-and the prospect of a revival still revolves around Lara, Chanderpaul and Carl Hooper. They are all averaging below 30 in the series and, whatever has happened at the top of the order, such statistics are simply not good enough.

Not only does a whitewash loom but so does another dubious record-unless the batsmen can finally show their true worth. Not since their Test inauguration, in England in 1928, have the West Indies gone through a series without a single individual hundred.

The bowling has held generally held its own but it will be again weakened by the absence of one of its two tried and trusted leaders, Curtly Ambrose, whose strained hamstring is still recovering only a week after it was sustained in the Fourth Test in Cape Town.

His long-time colleague, Courtney Walsh, returns for his 104th Test, his own hamstring injury now repaired. At the other end of the scale, Reon King, who flew in yesterday morning too late to join team practice at Centurion Park, will play his first at the age of 23, joining Nixon McLean and Merv Dillon as the fast bowlers of the present and future.

While Ambrose went through the motions at net practice yesterday morning, conscious his hopes of playing were unrealistic, Donald, his South African counterpart, was putting his hamstring, also strained in Cape Town, through a fitness test.

He passed it and will be ready, new ball in hand, to start proceedings in an unchanged team. Once again, South Africa had scored another early psychological point to add to the dozens over the series.

Source :: The Trinidad Express (https://www.trinidad.net/express/)