Does Domingo have the capacity for innovative thinking?
Russell Domingo has a year left to run on his current contract and has overseen a desperately poor run of results from the Proteas.
|||Cape Town - Cricket SA’s intensive review of the national team’s tournament failings can’t be some limp talk shop.
Too often CSA has conducted reviews, only for recommendations to be ignored or partially implemented. The fact that this review is taking place at the end of an awful 12-month period for the Proteas, offers the opportunity for the organisation to set forward on a new path for its most crucial asset.
While CSA chief executive Haroon Lorgat, who announced the establishment of the review upon the Proteas’ return on Tuesday following the latest failure at an ICC event, was loathe to pronounce on whether coach Russell Domingo’s job was on the line; that will have to form part of the process.
Domingo has a year left to run on his current contract and has overseen a desperately poor run of results from the national side in the last year.
The question the review panel need to ask is: Does Domingo have the capacity to guide a team to success in an ICC event through some new and innovative thinking, or must someone else be given an opportunity?
Domingo was firm in his belief that he had the support of the players, and that his backroom staff was the best equipped to help improve them. The fact is, in the last two ICC events - the 2015 ODI World Cup and this year’s World T20 - South Africa have won seven and lost five in 12 matches. That is alarming inconsistent, and in the defeats it’s been the inability to cope with pressure and to think clearly that has proved most costly.
Can that be coached? Individually, the players have at various times - whether in a different format, or for a different team or just in a bilateral series or non-ICC event - shown they are capable of playing under pressure.
It is perhaps why both Domingo and captain Faf du Plessis found it so hard to explain why they failed to cope at the World T20. The phrases “tough to answer,” and “difficult to explain,” littered their replies as they sought to outline the Proteas’ problems.
There is an enormous weight on the shoulders of players representing SA at ICC events, as Du Plessis’ first media conference in India illustrated prior to the World T20.
There, he faced a barrage of questions about “choking” and while he dealt with those inquiries in a forthright manner, it highlighted the spectre that haunts SA at all these events.
Du Plessis’ team didn’t even get the chance to choke at the World T20. They were just bad from the beginning, with the ball in Mumbai, and then truly awful with the bat in Nagpur.
His leadership will be assessed too. The confusion over AB de Villiers’ spot hindered SA’s planning. Flexibility and adaptability are to be welcomed but the opening spot in a T20 team’s batting order is vital, especially for an event in India. And having played De Villiers in that position for the year leading up to the tournament, and then not utilising him in that position at the tournament, was plain wrong.
Du Plessis said circumstances changed owing to the form of Hashim Amla and Quinton de Kock, but that is a poor excuse even given the success of the pair in India.
De Villiers’ only meaningful impact was against Afghanistan and rather than spearhead the Proteas challenge, the team’s most dynamic player had a bit-part role.
Above all, though, the review process needs to be forthright and honest, which are not elements usually associated with the national team, as last year’s drama over the selection of the starting side for the 50-over World Cup semi-final against New Zealand showed.
Do that, and perhaps CSA can earn the public’s and even the players’ trust again, and the possibility of actually winning an ICC event will improve exponentially.
Cape Times