Cape Town - South African cricket may be facing a crisis of its own, but one of the Proteas greatest sons Gary Kirsten could soon be the man rescuing England from theirs.
The English Cricket Board are on the lookout for a new coach and overhaul of their entire system after a suffering a 4-0 Ashes humiliation in Australia last season. Chris Silverhood, who was previously chosen ahead of Kirsten for the England head coach role, has been jettisoned and the former Proteas opener and coach is once again being viewed as a leading candidate within the Lord's corridors.
What makes Kirsten particularly alluring to the ECB is the 54-year-old's deep appreciation and dedication to Test cricket as England's rise in white-ball cricket that culminated with winning the 2019 World Cup on home soil unfortunately coincided with the collapse of the English County Championship first-class structure and ultimately the national red-ball team.
“It just feels like it’s Groundhog Day there,” Kirsten said in an exclusive interview with Wisden.com. “It’s average, mediocre cricket. I think there needs to be more intensity to the first-class format. You can’t have so many games. You lower the intensity, you lower the standard. Make every innings a priority. Don’t make it so you’ve got 28 innings in your season, make it tight, make it 16. So every innings is a big one.
“You need players thinking. ‘Jeez, I don’t have a whole lot of games here, I’ve got to make this a big one’. And the other thing of course is that bowlers operate at 70% because they know they can get performances on wickets bowling at 70%, so it’s not good for them either.
"Look,” he says, “I don’t know all the answers but I’d love to be involved in the discussion.”
Kirsten, who is the current coach of the Welsh Fire in the Hundred and batting mentor of new IPL team Gujarat Titans, believes for England to be successful again there needs to be a complete mind shift with the primary focus returning to Test cricket, like it was when he was in charge of the Proteas' run to No 1 on the ICC Test rankings back in 2012.
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“The only thing that we were interested in was Test match cricket,” Kirsten said. “Dale Steyn was in his prime, I don’t think in the whole time I was there he played more than 20 ODIs, we just left him out. Test cricket was the only focus. Maybe the time has come for England to say that Test cricket is their focus.”
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Like South Africa's current malaise, England's primary headache at the moment is their fragile batting order with captain Joe Root the obvious exception. Its no coincidence to Kirsten that Root has not played a T20I since 2019.
“It’s not rocket science,” he said. “A good Test match technique is about presenting the full face of the bat to straight deliveries – beautiful straight-bat players who hit the ball down the ground. There’s no funkiness to the way they play. It’s just solid.
“Often they don’t get the short format gigs because they’re not explosive enough as players. I mean, Joe Root doesn’t even play T20 cricket, and Marnus [Labuschagne] is the same for Australia. But those guys, they’re the ones who can manage the tough environments that Test match cricket offers.
“I think it’s much more challenging trying to turn good one-day cricketers into good Test cricketers. And maybe in England you’ve seen a bit of that, people they’ve been picking for their top six batting line-up, they’re often good one-day players but they haven’t really fired as Test match players."
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