Cricket South Africa

SA Cricket coach Mickey Arthur has resigned

It has been reported that the South African cricket coach Mickey Arthur has resigned from the national team, citing differences with Proteas captain Graeme Smith.

Mickey Arthur has been in charge of the national team since May 2005. Arthur achieve success with the national team, including record breaking test series victories in England and Australia. Under Mickey Arthur the Proteas claimed both the number 1 spots in ODI and Test cricket.

The Proteas will tour to India with Corrie van Zyl as coach, Corrie van Zyl is currently the head of the high performance centre. He recently coached the Diamond Eagles, which included six titles winning each of the domestic competitions twice, the SuperSport Series, MTN Domestic Competition and Standard Bank Pro20. Corrie van Zyl has also been involved in the national team, he was previously the assistant coach of the Proteas between 1998 to 2003 during which time he was involved in two World Cups, 50 Test matches and more than 120 ODIs.

A quick wrap of the test series

It’s a little late, but rather late than never, here’s my quick wrap of the series. I love my stats so I went through some statistics from the South Africa / England test series and this is what I found:

	Test	1	2	3	4	Total
England
	Runs	584	574	569	349	2076
	Wickets lost	19	9	19	20	67
South Africa
	Runs	738	719	476	423	2356
	Wickets lost	17	17	20	7	61
Most Runs	Smith	427
Highest score	Smith	183
Most Wickets	Swann	21
Highest Partnership	Smith/Amla	230

So over the four test matches South Africa scored more runs and took more wickets than England. I’ll claim that as a victory.

The most exciting yet also the most disappointing aspects of the test series was the South African bowling attack. We’re all too aware how they couldn’t finish off England on two occasions, but the selectors acted, and the tough decisions were made. It’s the re-emergence of Morne Morkel which stands out the most to me. International bowlers are reliant on their bowling partners, and who better to have then the world no1, Dale Steyn. If the selectors keep these two bowlers together for a long time then we’re in for a return to a great pace bowling attack that we had when Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock and more recently Ntini brought to world cricket.

It was great sitting at the wanderers watching South Africa truly dominate England, what a pity we couldn’t take those two wickets, and win the series 3-1 as I believe we deserved.

Below is a picture that I took at The Wanderers on the 3rd day, many people dressed up and were in a festive mood, South Africa’s biggest stadium was sold on the Saturday. To think that Cricket South Africa were going to cancel this test match…….

Cricket Statistics: The Wanderers, Johannesburg

The Wanderers, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Formerly known as: Kent Park

Capacity: 34 000

End Names: Corlett Drive End, Golf Course End

Home team: Lions

The Wanderers is also known as the Bull Ring, it’s the premier cricket stadium in South Africa holding the biggest capacity. The Wanderers is also the home of Cricket South Africa.

The Wanderers, formerly sponsored by Liberty Life, and now by Bidvest is one of the most intimidating stadiums South African cricket has to offer, not only does it have the biggest capacity, but the Johannesburg crowd love their cricket and their team. The Johannesburg crowd is not afraid to voice their opinions of players fielding on the boundary.

The Wanderers cricket stadium hosted the final of the 2003 cricket world cup final between India and Australia, which Australia won by 125 runs. The stadium also hosted the 438 game on the 12th of March 2006, the One Day International (ODI) between Australia and South Africa broke the record for the highest score in ODI cricket…. twice in one night. In the first inning Ricky Ponting top scored with 164, to see his team set the highest total in ODI cricket, 434. Chasing the highest total ever, the never say die attitude of the Proteas cricket team was put on display by Herschelle Gibbs when he scored 175 runs to win the game by 1 wicket with 1 ball remaining, and by doing so South Africa set the highest total in ODI cricket, 438.

First Test Match	South Africa v England – Dec 24-29, 1956
Last Test Match	South Africa v Australia – Feb 26-Mar 2, 2009
Matches Played	31
Matches Won by Home Side	12
Matches Won by Touring Side	9
Matches Drawn	10
Matches Tied	0
Highest Individual Innings (Test)	214 Greg Blewett 1997 South Africa v Australia
Best Bowling (Innings)(Test)	9/113 Hugh Tayfield 1957 South Africa v England
Best Bowling (Match)(Test)	13/192Hugh Tayfield 1957 South Africa v England
Highest Team Innings	652/7 dec by Australia 2002 v South Africa
Lowest Team Innings	72 South Africa 1956 v England
Highest Run Chase Achieved	294/8 Australia 2005/6 v South Africa
Average Runs per Wicket	30.25
Average Runs per Over	2.96

Shaun Pollock and Makhaya Ntini share the title for most wickets taken at The Wanderers, with 53 each. Polly has a slightly better economy rate of 2.44. Jacques Kallis holds the record for most runs at the ground on 994, which includes two centuries, four half-centuries with a highest score of 186 against New Zealand.

Cricket South Africa and ECB in tour discussions regarding Wanderers

Cricket South Africa (CSA) and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) are in discussions about the impact the change of three venues will have on English supporters who have already booked for the tour of South Africa by England later this year.

Gerald Majola, CSA CEO, said Wednesday: “David Collier, my counterpart at the ECB, has asked for clarification following enquiries by British travel agents who have sold packages based on the previous venues.

“The venue changes were made on the basis of a minimum impact in this regard, and we are in discussions with the ECB about this.”

The venue changes came about following a decision by CSA’s Members Forum, comprising all CSA’s Affiliates, that no international matches under the auspices of CSA will be allocated to the Wanderers Stadium until the Gauteng Cricket Board supplies CSA with its conditions for staging such matches at this venue, and until the GCB apologises for its criticism of the management of the recent Indian Premier League held in South Africa.

Cricket South Africa relocated the three Wanderers’ matches to Durban (Standard Bank International Pro20), Bloemfontein (MTN ODI) and Port Elizabeth (Castle Test) when the Forum’s conditions were not met by GCB.