It has been a successful first season in charge of the South African national team for Ottis Gibson. The former Caribbean paceman oversaw Test series wins at home against Bangladesh, India and Australia, apart from One-Day International and Twenty20 International triumphs against Bangladesh, though there were chastening white-ball series losses in both formats to India.
Bangladesh were swept aside in September but the big challenges were to come later in the year. South Africa defeated India 2-1 in the three-Test series, then bounced back from the loss of the first Test to crush Australia 3-1, aided in no small measure by the meltdown in the Australian camp following the ball-tampering fracas during the third game in Cape Town.
“I’m very satisfied,” the head coach said after Australia were crushed by 492 runs in the final Test in Wanderers on Tuesday (April 3). “To win these two series (India and Australia), especially this one with all the other noise that has been going on, is quite rewarding.
“I have enjoyed my first six months,” he said. “It has been quite an experience, we have won eight out of 10 Test matches, and we won two big series. The same way that players set goals, the coaches also set goals for the team. The goal for the Test team is to try to get to No. 1. We know where we are in that space but the way the players have welcomed me into the dressing room has been fantastic.”
Aiden Markram, who made his debut against Bangladesh, was the star performer with the bat in the Australia series with 480 runs while Kagiso Rabada, who also impressed against India, finished as the man of the series against the Aussies with 23 wickets from four matches.
“It has been a tough summer,” Gibson pointed out. “We played against two of the toughest teams to play against. We went a different way in terms of the approach we took for the series against India, we went with four fast bowlers and six batsmen. The pitches were a bit sporty and the batsmen were under pressure to score runs, but we didn’t need 500 scores on the wickets that we had so it was ok.
“The result of the one-day series wasn’t great, but personally I didn’t mind it,” he said, referring to the 5-1 hammering at the hands of India in a series marked by injuries to several marquee players. “I know that the cricket fans who come to watch want the team to win but from my point of view, I got to see a lot of players we wouldn’t have seen if there weren’t so many injuries. We have had so many injuries over the summer so it was tough to pick the same team from game to game but we got to see some new players. In September, I spoke about widening the pool of players and we got to see some new players even though we didn’t have good results.
“A Test series against Australia in South Africa, our goal was to be the first South African team since readmission to win a series against Australia at home,” he said. “That was our focus in every game. When we lost in Durban – we didn’t play our best cricket- but we knew there were three games left to play. In every game, we got better as we went on and we have seen some fantastic performances from young players like Aiden Markram leading the batting and KG Rabada leading the bowling.”
South Africa thus ended the season as the No. 2 Test team, behind India, but though the defeats in the ODI series against India were galling, Gibson said with the World Cup 14 months away, it had presented him with an opportunity to assess the bench strength.
“I’m certainly happy with the group of players we have,” he said. “The message for all the other franchise players is that if you are performing at franchise level, you have a great chance to play for your country still. In limited-overs cricket. we picked Robbie Frylinck, Lungi Ngidi and Junior Dala to name a few, a lot of guys performing at franchise level got opportunities this season. I would like to send the message to those guys who have ambition of playing for their country that they will get looked at.”