Proteas’ progress helped by players no longer fussing about pitches

It’s taken them a few years, but the Proteas have finally stopped whingeing about pitches.

As a result, the energy once devoted to protesting about surfaces is now directed towards planning. The series win in Bangladesh proved that the current batting group can score hundreds and isn’t interested in what’s under their feet, rather what’s happening between their ears.

Having been successful in their last two series, it’s a mental shift that coach Shukri Conrad believes will carry them through four home Tests and hopefully onto the World Test Championship final next year. 

“We have kept talking about the mentality we want this group to have. For them to back what they have got, to show their character in everything they do,” he said. 

Gripes about surfaces grew through the periods when Faf du Plessis and Dean Elgar led the Proteas. It didn’t help that a former coach, Otis Gibson, in 2017 called for pitches in South Africa to be made more suitable for the home teams. 

It was a distraction that allowed for excuses and created scenarios in which demons lurked at every turn — and even when conditions weren’t tricky, the players’ minds were already warped. 

Conrad has made it clear more than once in recent weeks that he doesn’t want the surfaces for the four home Tests against Sri Lanka and Pakistan to deviate from what is the norm at the venues that will host those matches. 

“We won’t be asking for specific conditions back home because we feel (the bowlers) can create enough opportunities on good wickets and our batters have now shown they can get hundreds,” said the Proteas Test mentor.

Although Elgar and Aiden Markram each made centuries last summer, on difficult surfaces at Centurion and a minefield at Newlands — that was later deemed dangerous by the ICC — the kind of consistent scoring in Bangladesh hadn’t been seen since the halcyon days of Smith, Amla, Kallis and De Villiers.

Removing the pitch as a point of conjecture means batters play what’s in front of them, and even on a tricky surface in Dhaka, which the hosts hoped would open old mental wounds, rather than fret about a spinning track, the likes of Kyle Verreynne and Wiaan Mulder plotted the best path towards scoring a big first innings total. 

Batting coach Ashwell Prince, known for his hard approach over the course of a 66-match Test career, has enforced the importance of a steely resolve with the current batters. 

“He fits in beautifully with what we want to do here,” said Conrad. “We don’t go too much into techniques, he sits at the forefront of the mentality we want to drive in the batting group.”

Before Chattogram, it had been seven years since the Proteas had last had three or more batters score hundreds in the same Test innings, it was the same length of time since a partnership of 200 or more, which Tony de Zorzi and Tristan Stubbs managed, and it had been four years since South Africa last scored more than 500 in an innings.

Whether that represents a corner being turned will be made clear in the series’ against Sri Lanka and Pakistan. 

Both of those teams have won their most recent series and Sri Lanka, like South Africa, also carry hopes of qualifying for the WTC final at Lord’s. In addition, they’re the only subcontinent team that has won a Test series in South Africa — doing so in 2019, in matches played at Kingsmead and St George’s Park, the venues for this season’s series. 

“No matter where you play it is a home match and you have to back yourself in South Africa,” said Conrad. 

“I’m not being blase, you can’t play all your matches in one venue in South Africa. So what’s the point (of worrying)? We are comfortable... I don’t see a need to make a big thing about where we are playing — if they give us good wickets, we’ll be all right.”