Positive intent pushes Proteas

WHEN South Africa reached the close of play on Day Two at Queen’s Park Oval in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on Thursday, with the score well above 300 runs, regardless of the seven wickets that fell, it marked what could be the turning point of this Test team.

After all, the Proteas Test side has endured a dry two-year period from the batting side of things where the team has reached the 300-run mark a handful of times in their most recent 20 Test innings.

Therefore, when a younger, less experienced Proteas side such as the current one is able to score 299 runs in a single day, there is a definitely lot of improvement.

However, there is still room for growth as individual centuries are still lacking.

One of the major concerns in the past two years was how the batters just did not score big hundreds despite having had starts early in their innings.

In the ongoing first Test in Trinidad, albeit being a different batting order, the batters had starts but just failed to convert them into big scores.

Captain Temba Bavuma grafted hard for his 182-ball 86, a top score at the end of Day Two, while 26-year-old opening batter Tony de Zorzi fought hard for his 78 before he also lapsed in concentration and gave away his wicket softly, just as his captain did.

Despite the soft dismissals, it is important to note the dry and slow nature of the wicket prepared for this Test. It was a difficult surface to bat on, just as much as it was for the bowlers to strike in the opening two days of the match.

“I would’ve liked to have kicked on a bit. I think Temba and I had a nice partnership there after Tristan (Stubbs) went out, so (it was) important for us to consolidate,” said De Zorzi.

“It’s not easy to get wickets. It’s not easy as a batter to get your flow. It’s a game of patience, both ways. It’s a little bit easier when the ball is new to get runs, but that’s also when the bowlers have their best chance, so it’s a good match-up.

“Then, as the ball gets softer, scoring gets a little bit slower, and I think we saw that in the session run rates (three runs per over) and it becomes a game of patience between bat and ball,” he added.

If anything, one would have expected the inexperienced batting unit to fold under those conditions. They needed a seasoned campaigner who understood the importance of biding their time, absorbing pressure and cashing in when the bowlers began to tire.

Besides Aiden Markram (9), Stubbs (20) and Ryan Rickelton (19), the rest of the top seven batters showed heart and a deeper understanding of the task at hand than one would expect from such a young batting unit.

De Zorzi reckoned that the nature of the wickets back home in South Africa allowed them to adapt to the surface in Port of Spain.

The left-handed batter likened the surface at Queens Park Oval to the coastal wickets here at home, and mentioned Newlands in Cape Town and Boland Park in Paarl as similar to the one that has been served up for the ongoing Test.

“We do have a couple (of wickets) back home, coastal wickets that tend to play like this as the games go on for four-day cricket – even in Cape Town, and Paarl, which is not necessarily a coastal wicket but starts to play similarly,” said De Zorzi.

“We just said we’re going to be positive and if something is in our areas we backed ourselves to put it away.

“We saw guys scored in different areas. Temba used his feet to hit it over extra (cover), and I went down the ground. We just tried to be positive and bat with good intent,” he concluded.

Day Four will get underway in Trinidad at 4pm SA time.