Cape
Town – Proteas captain Faf du Plessis says
there have been no specific instructions to groundsmen during the ongoing Test
series against England.
The Proteas won the Boxing Day
Test at Centurion before losing at Newlands and then St George’s park to go 2-1
down in the series, and while the hosts have been poor, they have perhaps not
been helped by the nature of the wickets.
The strip in Port Elizabeth,
especially, offered very little in the way of assistance to the seamers early
in the contest with new ball specialist Vernon Philander considered
ineffective.
Spin bowling was responsible for
five of the nine English wickets to fall in the match and 10 of the 20 South
African wickets and, speaking afterwards, Du Plessis acknowledged that he was
surprised by what he had seen.
“This did surprise us in
terms of how slow it was, even speaking to the groundsman, he was surprised
with the lack of pace it had on the first day and also the amount of turn that it
took,” the skipper said.
“Normally spinners do play a
role in PE, but generally not on day one and day two.”
Test wickets were a strong
talking point in South Africa during the Ottis Gibson era, where Du Plessis
acknowledged that the leadership had perhaps gone too far in requesting seam
friendly wickets in a three-match Test series against India in 2018.
The third match of that series,
at the Wanderers, was very nearly abandoned due to the dangerous nature of the
wicket.
These days, however, it seems
that Du Plessis is having less of a say in terms of how pitches are
prepared.
“As I said at the beginning
of the summer, there was no clear message to and groundsmen around the country
about something specific,” he said.
“It was a case of just
getting good cricket wickets.”
The series will now move to the
Wanderers for the fourth and final Test, where it has historically been quick
and bouncy and a strip that offers a lot to the quicks.
South Africa, of course, will go
into that match without the suspended Kagiso Rabada.
– Compiled by Lloyd Burnard
