South African quicks likely to outgun injury-strapped Black Caps

To his credit, Stephen Fleming has not yet started to wear the hunted look of a captain who suspects that he might be on a hiding to nothing. With just the last one-day international at Newlands on Saturday remaining he has three Tests against South Africa to think about and from where he's standing, it can't be a pretty sight.

New Zealand arrived in South Africa two-and-a-half weeks ago with the ICC KnockOut 2000 trophy taking up space in their kitbag. They played good cricket in Nairobi to win the tournament, but in the space of four one-day internationals on South Africans pitches they found themselves short of the type of ammunition required to compete in this country.

To get to the point, Fleming's New Zealanders are probably two bowlers short - a genuine quick and a class spinner. As far as the latter is concerned, Daniel Vettori is not on this trip to South Africa and he has been missed.

In the one-dayers New Zealand would have looked to Vettori to get through 10 overs in middle, possibly picking up wicket or two along the way, but his real value would have come in the Test matches.

It will not have escaped New Zealand that the lone Test victory achieved six years ago by Ken Rutherford's side came on a crumbling pitch at the Wanderers when Matthew Hart bowled slow left-arm on the final morning as South Africa folded up in Hansie Cronje's first Test match as captain.

Perhaps too much is put in store by South Africa's perceived weakness against spin - only Hart and Mushtaq Ahmed in Durban have won Test matches for their countries bowling spin in South Africa - but Vettori would have given Fleming a reliable option.

Of more concern to New Zealand, though, is the lack of genuine pace in their attack - and on the hard, fast pitches expected for the Test matches you have to be either very quick or very tight. New Zealand have had a tough time of it as far as their fast bowlers are concerned. Dion Nash had to return home from Zimbabwe, Chris Cairns will join him and Geoff Allott is not viewed as being fit enough to get through a Test match.

The new ball, then, is likely to be shared by Shayne O'Connor and Daryl Tuffey, who has not yet played on tour, or Kerry Walmsley, who is flying out to reinforce the tourists.

Some of the older South Africans may remember Walmesley. He played against them in 1995 for an Academy XI in Nelson with a deceptively open chest. He looks like he should be bowling inswingers, yet gets it to go away, or at least he did against Andrew Hudson who played for the ball going in, and watched in disbelief as it beat the outside edge and took his off stump.

The real point, though, is that with the best will in the world, New Zealand don't look to have the attack to bowl South Africa out twice. By contrast, the South Africans have young and hungry fast bowlers in their droves sniffing around the Test team.

On his form in the one-day matches, Roger Telemachus has offered a strong claim for inclusion in Test side to bowl behind Shaun Pollock and Allan Donald, but he may still have to shake off an unwanted reputation as a one-spell wonder reluctant to put in the hard work off the field. This is almost certainly no longer true, but people have long memories, and Telemachus may still have to prove his willingness to go the extra yard.

Nantie Hayward and Makhaya Ntini are both there or thereabouts, but flavour of the month is currently Mfuneko Ngam, the tall, loose-limbed quick from the Eastern Province. Ngam is young and quick and a lot of people fancy him. He, too, may still have to demonstrate to the selectors that he has the stamina to play Test cricket, but he very close to the side, as his partial call-up to the one-day squad suggests.

The requirement is for someone to bowl first change and to bowl a lot of overs in order to ease the demands on Jacques Kallis who simply cannot be expected to bowl upwards of 20 overs an innings if he is to bat at three. Ideally South Africa would have Pollock, Donald and AN Other as the spearhead, Kallis as a stand breaker, Lance Klusener to do the holding job and Nicky Boje as the spinner. It is South Africa's great fortune that they have the all-rounders to allow a six-pronged attack.

It's the other end of the order that is more difficult to read. Boeta Dippenaar seems to have been earmarked to open with Gary Kirsten in the Test matches, although both Mark Bruyns and Adam Bacher have their advocates, but for the middle two one-dayers Dippenaar was pushed down the order with Daryll Cullinan opening.

The thinking here is inexplicable. Until Herschelle Gibbs is available again, Dippenaar looks the most obvious candidate to open, yet he has hardly been given a chance to form a pairing with Kirsten. Cullinan doesn't want to play one-day cricket, yet he was forced into an unnatural and uncomfortable role for him. If the selectors wanted to cultivate an us-and-them mentality in the team, they could have hardly have gone about it more deliberately.

It emerged after last Saturday's match in Kimberley that Andrew Hall had been down to open, but was ill on the day of the game. Dippenaar was recalled (but did not get a knock) and Cullinan opened again. There might be some method in all of this, but it's hard to see what it is.