da esoccer bet： “I’m never going to apologise for getting into the final,” he says
da jogodeouro： Firdose Moonda02-Jan-2025Shukri Conrad, South Africa’s Test coach, has hit back at criticism of his team reaching the World Test Championship (WTC) final after a cycle in which they faced neither Australia nor England, and played only 12 Tests. They were the first team to book a spot at Lord’s after they reeled off six successive wins and qualified with a game to spare.”I’m never going to apologise for getting into the final,” Conrad told ESPNcricinfo at Newlands, ahead of the second Test against Pakistan. “It’s the biggest thing in this team’s existence. It’s the biggest thing for South African cricket at the moment. It’s the biggest thing for Test cricket, for world cricket, where the right noises are going to start being made.”Former England captain Michael Vaughan on Fox Cricket said South Africa got to the final “on the back of beating pretty much nobody” and that they don’t “warrant being in the World Test Championship final with whom they have played over the last two years”, while former Australia spinner Kerry O’Keeffe called South Africa’s run “like making the Wimbledon final without playing a seed on the way”.Related
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For Conrad, that is both incorrect and an insult to the opposition South Africa faced. “One of the nobodies we beat won a Test match in Australia – West Indies beat Australia in a Test match,” Conrad said. “They are not nobody. New Zealand beat India: three-zip in India. New Zealand is not a nobody. Sri Lanka won Test matches [against England and New Zealand]. I don’t buy this thing about us beating nobody. You tell any side to go and win six on the bounce, in places you haven’t won in a decade and with a young side, with a decimated bowling attack and when you do that, you come back and tell me that we’ve beaten nobody.”Because of South Africa’s paucity of fixtures – and because they sent an understrength side that lost 2-0 to New Zealand last February – every Test since their tour to the West Indies in August was almost a must-win. South Africa won that series 1-0. Then, they went to Bangladesh where captain Temba Bavuma could not play after an elbow injury, which resulted in them fielding the eighth and 11th least capped teams in the cycle, but they won their first series in the subcontinent in a decade.The home summer has been marred by bowling injuries with seven frontline quicks out of action – two (Wiaan Mulder and Gerald Coetzee) mid-Test – and South Africa have had to dig deeply into their reserves. Still, they came up with teams that beat Sri Lanka 2-0 and have now taken the lead against Pakistan.Michael Vaughan has questioned South Africa’s qualification for the WTC final•Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
While Conrad is proud of that, he understands his team is not the finished product and has repeatedly pointed out areas of improvement. He also acknowledged that “the format is not ideal” because not only do all the teams in the WTC not play against each other in a cycle but teams also don’t play the same number of matches. Each team plays six series in a WTC cycle – three home, three away – which means there are at least two teams on the points table they will not play.The number of matches in each series is also agreed on by the individual boards. While India, Australia and England scheduled five-Test series against each other, Cricket South Africa chose only two-match series for this cycle as a cost- and time-saving measure and Conrad hopes that will change.”Hopefully, the ICC is going to take control, whoever is going to take control, make it more even or more fair. But I’m not going to sit here and apologise.”The uneven number of fixtures is also why the WTC table is based on percentage points rather than actual points. As things stand, South Africa have won seven of 11 Tests in the cycle and have a winning percentage of 66.67%. Even if they lose the New Year’s Test to Pakistan, their percentage of 61.11 will be enough to see them finish in the top two. Conrad believes this is as fair a way of ranking the teams as there can be.”What do I say to the people who are jumping up and down? Look, with the little bit of math I did, percentages are probably the ideal way of working it out. Let’s assume we play 12 [Tests] now and we win six, then we end up with 50%. Because some other teams play 20 Tests, is it okay for them to lose ten and be the same? You still have to win more than you lose and get your percentages up, irrespective of who you play against.”Vaughan also concluded that South Africa “decided Test match cricket wasn’t quite as important” when they took a second-string team to New Zealand and insisted their frontline players fulfilled contractual obligations to the SA20. At the time, Steve Waugh wondered if South Africa’s actions would be a “defining moment in the death of Test cricket”, but Conrad viewed it pragmatically.”The SA20 has to happen because it is the lifeblood of South African cricket,” he said last January. “If it doesn’t happen, we are not going to have Test cricket anyway. We’ve got to find a way to coexist with the league, we’ve got to co-exist with leagues around the world to ensure the sustainability of the game.”The third season of the SA20 will begin on January 9; the tournament has turned a profit for the last two years. CSA, as majority shareholders, has been paid dividends in the tens of millions of Rands and that is only expected to grow.This year the scheduling of the SA20 means that South Africa will not have their strongest side available to them for an ODI tri-series in Pakistan ahead of the Champions Trophy. CSA has promised there will not be any further clashes with the SA20 and bilateral cricket, which includes England’s inbound tour in the 2026-27 season.That Test series will form part of the 2025-2027 cycle of the WTC, in which South Africa will play both England and Australia (also at home) in three-Test series each, after travelling to Pakistan and India later this year.
