Magiet talks rotation again

October 18, 2000 by neil manthorp

Neil Man­thorp — 18/10/2000,

South African crick­et’s desire for ‘squad rota­tion’ has been around for quite some time now, but so has an even stronger inabil­i­ty to break old habits! No one can real­ly be blamed because, ulti­mate­ly, it is the play­ers — and only the play­ers — who can make such a sys­tem suc­cess­ful and we should be sym­pa­thet­ic to a group of men who want to play in every sin­gle match.

“Yes, we are like­ly to rotate the squad,” selec­tion con­venor Rushdie Magi­et said on Wednes­day. “I think we’ll do quite a bit of jug­gling and play­ing around with the squad over this sea­son, and some of next sea­son, in order to fine the best bal­ance for the 2003 World Cup. It’s very impor­tant to give all the play­ers who do well domes­ti­cal­ly the chance to per­form on the big stage,” Magi­et said.

One of Magi­et’s great­est qual­i­ties is his hon­esty and will­ing­ness to deal frankly with straight­for­ward ques­tions. He rarely becomes rat­tled and even more rarely aggres­sive when sen­si­tive ques­tions are thrown his way. For exam­ple: “Does Roger Telemachus’ sus­pen­sion for the first match against New Zealand in Potch on Fri­day mean that Makhaya Nti­ni is guar­an­teed a place in the start­ing XI?”

“Well, we have Shafiek Abra­hams to call upon as well,” said Magi­et, deal­ing bril­liant­ly with the UCB’s ‘teams of colour’ pol­i­cy but stick­ing to the prin­ci­ple of not actu­al­ly spelling it out. “You can spec­u­late about that, cer­tain­ly, but it would be gross­ly unfair of me to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when we haven’t had our selec­tion meet­ing yet. I would say it is like­ly, but I can’t con­firm it,” Magi­et said.

Daryll Cul­li­nan, form and fit­ness per­mit­ting, remains an impor­tant part of Magi­et’s plans for the 2003 World Cup while Boeta Dip­pe­naar seems like­ly to be giv­en a chance to claim a place at the top of the order along­side Gary Kirsten. Andrew Hall, in turn, may be played down the order and asked to con­tribute more reg­u­lar­ly with the ball.

If Aus­tralia are to be used as a guide­line, and they often are (!!), then squad rota­tion — espe­cial­ly for the fast bowlers — is a proven win­ner. Whether South African can final­ly sum­mon up the inner strength to enter a match with­out Lance Klusen­er, Shaun Pol­lock or Jacques Kallis, with the greater, long-term good in mind, is quite anoth­er mat­ter. In the Aus­tralian squad, for exam­ple, every­one receives a match fee whether they play or not.

That would change atti­tudes a bit, I would imagine.