T Chesterfield: Spinners Tales - RSA Schools Coaching System (25 Jan 1996)

SPINNER`S TALES (January 1996)

More than floodwaters warp our schools coaching system

It has rained a lot at Centurion Park this almost long, forggotten summer: sheets of torrential rain and watching indistinct figures in waterproofs struggling against a swirling tide thrown up by the Hennops River. For a couple of days last weekend the rugby fields could have been easily mistaken as part of the "Dusi course" and the only reason the goalposts weren`t unceremoniously uprooted was because they were bolted down. Not at all the sort of conditions in which to play a Castle Cup match over four days: afer all, where else in the world would you have a river bursting its banks and floodwaters, only 80m from the boundary, forcing the foolhardy spectator to seek the sanctuary of the grandstand? Normally the Hennops is a quiet trickle and the weather in keeping with the warmth of the summer months. Somehow last Sunday the weather was transplanted from midsummer Derby to brisk, breezy Centurion Park: all that was missing were the Derbyshire spectators, normally dressed in open neck and short shirt-sleeves. The county ground in Nottingham Road, Derby, must rank, next to Carisbrook, Dunedin, New Zealand, as the bleak houses of the circuit. All of which had nothing to do with Northerns` spineless batting performance one afternoon, as six wickets crashed for five runs, and the miracle of the following day that was hewen out of the scraps left from the feet of clay 24 hours before. And as fine as the innings Mike Rindel and Mark Davis put together on Monday, it was noted that neither were a product of the Northerns schools system. In fact Andre Seymore and Gerald Dros apart, the Northerns schools system had failed to produce a South African Schools (Nuffield Week) batsman for 11 summers. Alarming, is it not, that Pretoria Boys` High, Northerns top school, has failed, apart from Paul Hector in 1985, to produce a batsman to win a SA Schools since Kevin Verdoorn in 1972/73. Jim Pressdee, the Boys` High coach, for Glamorgan and Northern Transvaal captain, would soundly argue that most of the SA Schools sides since 1975 have contained a large number of postmatrics. As do the schools they play in other centres. The playing fields, as he refers to them, have now been levelled with the age limit reduced, from next season, to under-18, removing the post-matric lads from the system. There are a variety of arguments offered by others what is wrong, and why Northerns, in terms of its senior school population, is bottom of the list when it comes to the number who have won SA School caps. Then we look at Free State, where there is only one genuine dominant school. They may be smaller in population but their production line has reeled off enough quality to make the Northerns schools system blush with embarrassment. Castle Cup honours in 1992/93 and 1993/94; B&H Series 1988/89, 1993/94 and 1984/85. Eastern Province, Natal, Transvaal and Western Province have all produced quality and class and it shows in their Castle Cup and limited-overs series trophy successes over the last 15 years. If we take the head in the sand attitude adopted by the school masters on the under/19 selection panel over Paul Adams at Centurion Park last April, perhaps the time has seriously come to hand selection of all teams above under-13 over to the professionals. Perhaps then Northerns will unearth the genuine talent to win trophies.