SA vs Pak – Piet Botha backs South Africa bowlers to attack but also wants them to stay patient

Online Editor "Valley Vision" 2 days ago

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South Africa have no choice but to “keep attacking” Pakistan as they go in search of the eight wickets required (as Saim Ayub will play no further part in the Test) to win the series and sweep the home summer. With a 208-run advantage, Pakistan following-on and two days left to play, South Africa will throw everything at the batters, even if it means conceding heavily, as they did on the third evening.

Shan Masood and Babar Azam put on the highest first-wicket partnership by a Pakistani duo against South Africa and scored at a rate of 4.42 to the over and there were times when it looked like they were too many boundary balls on offer. Masood hit 14 fours and Babar 10, with South Africa bowling both sides of the wicket and often erring on the fuller side but that is all part of how they hoped to induce a false shot on flat track albeit that they only managed one wicket in Pakistan’s second innings.

With 15 minutes left to go in the day, Babar was tempted by a full, wide ball from Marco Jansen and edged to gully. South Africa are hoping for more of the same on day four. “You have to be attacking. We can’t defend because of the position we are in,” Piet Botha, South Africa’s Test bowling coach, said after the third day’s play. “We have to keep slips and a gully in and have to use our bounce, even though it (the pitch) is not quick. Once the batters are set, it seems to be quite easy to rotate. So you can go defensive, but we’re not in that situation. We have to attack.”

But Botha cautioned that they also have to be more careful with their disciplines, which went awry on Sunday afternoon, and were magnified by the number of no-balls. In total, South Africa have bowled 23 in this match and ten of those in the second innings. Only one, a Kagiso Rabada ball that hit Masood on the knee roll looked like a wicket-taking ball but South Africa do not want to take the chance that there may be more, and the bowler has overstepped.

“It’s disappointing,” Botha said. “It’s something that creeps into the game every now and then. We probably started a little bit with that problem in Bangladesh and sorted it out. Now it’s crept back in.”

But Botha is only partially correct. Across two Tests in Bangladesh, South Africa bowled 25 no-balls but they then delivered 28 against Sri Lanka and ten at SuperSport Park. Including this Test, that equates to 86 no-balls in six matches. Of those Rabada had bowled 44, and Wiaan Mulder 11. Botha had an explanation for at least one of those. “With Wiaan, what we’re really trying to do is to get him to run in a little bit harder because he wants to be a bowler that has a fourth seamer in attack and be a little bit quicker,” he said. “One of the aspects we worked on is for him to run in a little bit harder and that brought its own issues. We worked on it this morning a bit, and it seemed to work for a while. For others it may be different on different days.”

A variety of other reasons were spitballed to explain the rest. “Sometimes it’s the ground, sometimes it’s the wind, sometimes it’s fatigue, sometimes it’s the slope,” Botha said. “But it’s obviously something we have to pay attention to again and make sure we fix it.”

“Once you get frustrated or start searching a bit too much like we might have done in the second innings, you’re going at fours and fives (runs an over). That’s what you don’t want to do.”

Piet Botha, South Africa’s Test bowling coach

And that will be his second message to the attack in the morning: stay patient. “We have a very good couple of Tests where we’ve knocked teams over but these things we always talk about: discipline and patience,” Botha said. “Once you get frustrated or start searching a bit too much like we might have done in the second innings, you’re going at fours and fives (runs an over). That’s what you don’t want to do. Let’s go back to try and see if we can go at threes and a false shot will come,”

South Africa have bowled out teams on all but four occasions in this World Test Championship cycle which includes a rain-affected draw and the two matches they sent a second-string side to New Zealand in. So with a frontline attack, they back their ability to dismiss oppositions no matter what the situation.

In this case, they understand that by enforcing the follow-on, they gave Pakistan some of the best batting conditions of the match but after bowling them out for 194 and with a 421-run lead, felt there was enough cushioning to put them again. The surface has yet to show any real signs of deterioration but it is taking a turn and historically tends to become more difficult from the fourth day. “There were a couple of slow motion videos with the dust and you expect day four and five to be the days where the spinner comes into play. Already a couple have turned and also bounced,” Botha said. “The signs are there that after lunch tomorrow, Kesh[av] Maharaj will come more and more into the game.”

Maharaj has already found the turn that Pakistan’s part-time spinner Salman Agha did not but even if he doesn’t, South Africa are willing to bide their time. “We talk about it all the time because you expect these days. That’s Test cricket,” Botha said.

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