I smell a rat here- did Smithy finally take a leaf out of the Hansie Cronje captaincy manual, and accept a leather jacket from a dodgy bookie named Sanjay?
Seriously though, Bangladesh completely outbatted, outbowled and out-fielded the SA team, which begs a couple of questions which has ben simmering for quite some time to be answered.
1- Captaincy- while Ricky Ponting and Stephen Fleming actually read the game and control it with their bowling changes and field placings, old Smithy`s going with the tried and trusted, pre-programmed Plan A. When plan A fails- complete and utter panick! Polly must bowl 7 on the trot up front, and go for about 20 in that time. If he gets clobbered, what to do? Macky`s got to get a couple of early wickets. If he doesn`t- panick!
2- Balance of team- I actually really rate Robbie Peterson as one of our better ODI spinners. However, it seems like the SA brains trust( now there`s an interesting choice of term!) has f-all faith in him, which begs the question- why the heck select a guy if you`re never gonna play him in the match 11?
3- Passangers past their prime or out of form- when Mark Waugh, a legend in his time, lost form, the Aussie selectors were wise enough to relieve him of his duties a few years back. No place for sentiment in selection in the land Down Under. Look, Shaun Pollock has been a great servant of SA cricket. One does not take 400 Test wickets and 300+ in ODI`s without being able to hold a seam upright. But is he maybe past it? It`s been more than 3 years since his last Test 5-for, and he was horribly exposed on the Carribean wickets by both Aus and Sri Lanka, and failed to strike against Bangladesh. Same wit Justin Kemp, a master blaster when in form, but has simply not adjusted to the slower wickets of the Caribbean. SA made the same mistake with Allan Donald in 2003.....
4- Batting- the much-vaunted SA batting depth and lower-order batting has been exposed as a myth by Aus, Sri Lanka and now Bangladesh. If the top 4 doesn`t get at least 2 50`s between them, the batting just goes completely off- and it smells worse than last week`s sushi.
5- Pressure situations- the choker`s tag is alive and well. Once again, a lot of very soft dismissals while chasing a very gettable target proved to be the undoing.
6- Death bowling- 70 runs off the last 7 overs. Without Hall at the death, our death bowling is exactly that- dead!
