South African selectors under tremendous pressure (4 December 1998)

4 December 1998

South African selectors under tremendous pressure

By Tony Becca

EAST LONDON - The responsibility of selectors is to select, from the available players, the best combination of the best players to win a match.

When South Africa's selection committee, under chairman Peter Pollock, meets to select the team for the second Test against the West Indies starting in Port Elizabeth on December 10, it will have more than that on its mind.

It is under pressure, from the non-white community, from the United Cricket Board of South Africa and from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to select a team more representative of the people of South Africa.

That is a tall order and will be difficult to accomplish.

Going into the first Test, Pollock and company had a great opportunity to satisfy the call for black and or coloured players in the team, but in their effort to put out what they considered the best team, they did not.

Instead of handing hometown boy David Terbrugge his first cap, the selectors could have included Makhaya Ntini - the 21-year-old black pacer from Border who has played in four Test matches and taken 10 wickets and instead of selecting 38-year-old offspinner Pat Symcox, who at that time had a record of 34 wickets from 17 matches with a best performance of four for 69 and an average of 42.76, they could have included 21-year-old coloured left-arm spin bowler Paul Adams whose record reads 19 matches, 59 wickets, a best performance of six for 55 and an average of 31.08.

According to the selectors, there was no non-white player in action at the Wanderers because those in contention, including coloured fast-medium Roger Telemachus who failed a fitness test before last year's tour of Australia and who was injured before playing a match on the recent tour of England, were either injured or had lost form.

Not many, however, believe that - especially as Adams was in the squad of 12 and with the pressure mounting, with the second Test scheduled for Port Elizabeth where there is a strong non-white following and where cricket among blacks is stronger than anywhere else in South Africa, with the third slated for Durban where there is a heavy Indian population and with the fourth scheduled for Cape Town where the coloureds love and support cricket, there is a move to ensure that at least one black or one coloured is in the team.

That, could be difficult - not only because there are those who believe that you should never change a winning team, but because Terbrugge, who got in ahead of Ntini, bowled well and fielded well; and so too Symcox, who was preferred to Adams.

The selectors, and the UCBSA, have one possible escape route - drop Adam Bacher, the one failure in the first Test and select coloured opening batsman Herschelle Gibbs of Free State.

According to the consensus, black and white, as talented as he appears, the 24-year-old Gibbs is not yet ready for Test cricket.

In 16 matches before his scores of one and six against the West Indies, however, the record of the 25-year-old Bacher was 776 runs with a top score of 96 and an average of 27.71.

"It would be crazy to go to Port Elizabeth, Durban and Cape Town with an all white team", said a high-ranking member of the UCBSA after South Africa had won the first Test, and if that is so, based on the position in which the selectors have found themselves with Ntini and Adams, based on Bacher's moderate record, it matters not whether Gibbs is ready or not, he should be selected.

Source :: The Jamaica Gleaner (https://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/)