In a week during which the Durban CBD was locked down amid anti-immigration protests, and a four-car pile-up on the freeway has claimed one life and may yet take others, South Africa's head coach Shukri Conrad described his team's loss to Australia as "neither a calamity nor a catastrophe," but he also said they "need to get bloody better" for the rest of the summer.
Speaking shortly after South Africa lost the first Test by 214 runs, Conrad cautioned against overreacting despite being humbled. "We just lost a cricket Test match. It doesn't mean that you've now got to go soul-searching and questioning all the things that we've done really well and are doing really well. We just need to get bloody better," Conrad said.
The Kingsmead match was South Africa's first at home since becoming World Test Champions last June, with Temba Bavuma - unbeaten till then as Test captain over 12 matches - at the helm. So, expectations were high, even against the world's best.
South Africa being so completely outplayed came as a surprise but perhaps it shouldn't have, considering Kagiso Rabada was ruled out of the first Test as he continues his recovery from a hamstring injury. "It's going to sound like an excuse," Conrad said, "but when your Rolls-Royce of fast bowlers is not available and you've got to fashion an attack…" The rest of his thought, left unspoken, was self-explanatory.
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The combination South Africa came up with in Rabada's absence leant on experience in the form of two frontline spinners, Keshav Maharaj and Simon Harmer. In hindsight, with the way conditions played, there was an argument to field only one and include an extra seam-bowling allrounder such as Corbin Bosch, which may also have lengthened the batting. But that would be making excuses for a batting line-up that under-performed in both innings.
"This has been coming for a while," Conrad said. "If you look at our performances back home, when there was something in the wicket [for the bowlers], against good attacks we've been heavily reliant on Temba [Bavuma] and Aiden [Markram], and then lower-order runs," Conrad said. "You only need to go back to Centurion (where Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen shared a ninth-wicket stand of 51 to successfully chase 148), you go back to the final at Lord's (where Markram and Bavuma led the chase), David (Bedingham) has obviously shown glimpses but we were always heavily reliant on lower-order runs."
And the reason South Africa have had to lean on their lower order is because there has been very little certainty in the top six. Leaving aside the New Zealand series in 2024, when Conrad was forced to field makeshift teams, since he took over as head coach, he has had four No. 3s, eight No.5s and eight No.6s. Of course, there are crossovers in those lists - and someone like Ryan Rickelton has batted in all those positions and now opens - but the general points to a line-up that is far from settled.
To address this issue, Conrad may start by simply glancing at who has been the most successful in each of those spots. Wiaan Mulder has the most runs at No. 3 but that is skewed by his 367* in Zimbabwe. And with Mulder's significant bowling load, the allrounder himself has said he cannot bat in the top five. The next best batter is Tristan Stubbs, who Conrad declared as No. 3 in August 2024. However, Stubbs has since moved down the order.
At No. 5, Bavuma has done better than anyone else, but the captain is a certainty batting one spot higher in South Africa's ideal line-up. Lhuan-dre Pretorius, who also scored big runs in Zimbabwe, is next on the list with the best batting numbers from No. 5, with Bedingham and Tony de Zorzi the only other players with more than 100 runs in that position.
At No. 6, Bedingham has been the best batter during Conrad's time with the team, but he too is now positioned at No. 3.
These permutations and combinations leaves the No. 5 and 6 slots open in this current South Africa batting line-up. There are plenty of options, though, starting with the obvious one in the squad. Uncapped batter Marques Ackerman could consider himself unlucky not to have played at his domestic home ground in Durban for the first Test. He remains the likeliest to step into the XI as things stand, but Conrad has also indicated he could look outside the current squad for a middle-order batter.
"We obviously need to look at how we can improve the side without being knee-jerk in our decision-making and panicky. We need to show composure," he said. "The question is always, will it make the boat go faster if we make changes, or will it slow the boat down? And we're constantly looking at how we can make the boat go faster."
The easiest outside solution will be to bring back de Zorzi, the most-used opener alongside Markram in the previous World Test Championship cycle. That would also allow Conrad to either drop Rickelton or move him into the middle order and drop Kyle Verreynne instead, who has not scored a fifty in 13 Test innings. The problem with that is that de Zorzi is still recovering from a hamstring injury and will be assessed on Friday, which may be too late to include him for a Test that starts on Sunday. That means Conrad might be forced to look elsewhere.
Twenty-year-old Pretorius - and not just because of his world-record T20 score of 188* - is a name that will come up for steering the ship. He is only 15 matches into his first-class career but he has a batting average of 56.28, with two hundreds in his first two games and already five to his name overall. He is also fearless with his batting. If South Africa call up Pretorius, he could solve another problem in the line-up - he can keep wickets. With neither Rickelton nor Verreynne in any long-format form, Pretorius could thus be a wildcard for the next Test.
Others will argue that if the keeper need replacing in the incumbent XI, Sinethemba Qeshile should get a chance. He has the experience of 72 first-class games, with an average of 37.39, and recently scored a double hundred for South Africa A against Bangladesh A. On the other hand, if South Africa are solely looking for a middle-order batter, Jordan Hermann - with a first-class average of 46.79 - or Matthew Breetzke - who has two Test caps to his name - could also be options.
All this may read like South Africa need a major shuffling of the deck chairs, and that they could ring in several changes ahead of the second Test. In broader contexts, that's not a calamity or a catastrophe. However, in cricketing ways, it may seem so, and Conrad will want to avoid that. He may simply stick with the players he has and ask them to change their approach, though he recognised that could be more difficult than it sounds.
"We keep talking about the batting because that's where we felt we let ourselves down the most. Dismissals in batting sit in one of three places. They are technical, tactical or mental," Conrad said. "If we're brutally honest, a lot of our dismissals sat in the mental corner. Is that an easier fix than technical and tactical? Probably not. So we need to see our guys pull up fresh enough.
"Aidan showed us in the second innings that there's nothing fancy about Test match cricket. That single-bloody-mindedness, where I've got to bat for a day and a half now, irrespective of what it looks like - some of our batters can take a leaf from his book. There's always noise, and I think… the top players are able to park that noise, and still be able to execute what they wanted to do."