Just going to insert a post of mine that I wrote a few days ago. What do you guys think?
@Bevab @SaiSrini @LiveLoveABD
If I’m correct, South Africa has two layers of domestic cricket. The higher level is the one with six franchises like the Aussie domestic system, while the lower level is filled with provincial teams. There is no promotion or relegation system.
Obviously, the lower level has an inferior quality of players and this skews their stats as they are considered in first class/list A stats too (not entirely sure of this though). So what happens in practice is, the average domestic player plays in these provincial sides until he is over 25-28 years of age, and then gets into his respective franchise team. There are exceptions to this of course, with players like Mulder who you would consider a prodigy making the franchise team before the age of 24.
While in theory this is supposed to work by providing experienced domestic players in their peak and the occasional prodigy, the presence of quotas and other factors means the quality might be diluted for one. Also, a player might dominate the provincial level for years but fail at the higher level after promotion due to a lack of proper exposure and stagnation during his formative years.
The team that you’ve listed is probably going to be the one that will be selected in the near future. However, there is no real young and upcoming talent that is yet to establish himself in the side with the exception of Mulder. This is where I think the likes of Malan, Fortuin and Potgieter could receive a lot more chances for now. By having them in and around the setup, you would be indicating to them that they are valued and will receive full support to establish themselves in the side if they play better than their competition. This is how you drive healthy selection battles.
By keeping them in the selector’s views, you would also lessen the risk of them being lured away by Kolpak deals. Once Brexit sets in, that door is permanently closed. As a result, there is bound to be increased interest from both players and clubs to finalize the last few deals. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a big recruitment drive with luxurious contracts heading the way of a few players. With this context, I would rather prefer to see 2-3 players around 28-30 years of age being enticed away by Kolpak deals rather than 5-6 24 year olds with plenty of years ahead of them. An example of a promising domestic batsman becoming a Kolpak player is Leus du Plooy, who is only 25 years of age and has already signed a Kolpak deal two months ago.
It is tough indeed to predict their future lineup given the selection restrictions they have in place. What I would like to see/will possibly happen are
- Keep Faf as the captain at least until the WC next year, and groom Markram to take over after that.
- Bring Maharaj into the playing XI like you’ve mentioned. The next 50 overs WC is in India and a finger spinner would be quite valuable there. I also don’t rate Shamsi very highly.
- Give Klaasen and Theunis more chances obviously. Theunis can also roll his arm over a bit which adds to the bowling options.
- Play Mulder at 6 to see if he can bat higher up the order if needed as that would mean there’s six genuine bowling options if needed. I don’t think he is a naturally aggressive player though, which could prove to be tricky.
- Keep the current crop of players happy and motivated, they are good and will be much better with confidence.
- Sack Ottis Gibson, his obsession with pace and green pitches has been detrimental to the development of the squad, most of their batsmen can barely play quality spin properly at the moment!
- As previously mentioned, get younger players involved with the national team frequently.
