South Africa is the underdog heading into its first Test match against New Zealand, which starts on Sunday, the fourth of February. True as this might be, the Two-Test series, without South Africa’s brightest stars due to commitments elsewhere (the SA20 tournament), does provide an opportunity for some players who have long been on the periphery to try to stake a long-term claim for a spot in the Test side.
- Zubayr Hamza
It’s hard to believe that it’s been five years since Hamza made his Test debut in 2019. Many thought it was a sign that he was the hundredth player to play Test cricket for the Proteas. The sign being, I presume, that he’d have lots of hundreds in him. In hindsight, we are cricket fans, not astrologers or symbologists, so I’m not sure why we had this idea. Six Tests into his international career, Hamza has shown only the faintest glimmers of competence at Test-level, when he scored an enterprising 62 in India back in 2019. To that end, he’s scored 212 runs at an average of 17.66. For reference, Keshav Maharaj, who is very much a lower-order batsman in word and deed, averages 15.33. His international career seemed to very much hang in the balance when he was handed a nine-month ban for a doping violation, but a combination of cricket’s ambivalence to failed drug tests, a lack of alternatives due to the SA20, and his sheer weight of runs at below Test level have seen him handed another chance. 647 runs at an average of 71.9 this season at first-class level suggests he’s in red-hot form. Time for him to show it.
- Duanne Olivier
Outside of David Bedingham and Keegan Petersen, who both played Tests in the India series, Olivier is probably the closest to outright selection to the “first team”. There was shock and horror nearly two years ago when he made his comeback in the Bangladesh series, and the one-time enforcer was bowling gentle medium pacers, but maybe he’s just gotten smarter about his craft. That will be the hope anyway. In the last 130 years of Test cricket, only Vernon Philander was faster to 50 Test wickets than Duanne Olivier, in terms of balls delivered. It’s memories of that level of incisiveness that fuel his selection. While not quite as dominant with the ball as one would like this season (he’s taken 20 wickets at an average of 30 in FC cricket), Proteas coach Shukri Conrad will be hoping that his international experience will stand up to fierce scrutiny.
- Neil Brand
Excluding players captaining countries that hadn’t played Test cricket before, only one man has captained his national team on debut in the last 50 years, New Zealand’s Lee Germon in 1995. While acknowledging that the Proteas have not selected a full-strength touring squad, seven of the selected players have played at least one Test, so you would have thought one of them might have gotten the nod on experience alone. Still, Brand, who originally had hoped to qualify for the English team through residency before moving back to South Africa, seems to have the backing of the coach, with Conrad rumoured to have wanted him selected instead of Dean Elgar for the recently completed India series. With 363 runs at an average of 25.9 in FC cricket heading into the series, he’s had a bit of a lean time of it, but he’ll be hoping to turn that all around.
- Dane Piedt
Having given up on his Protea career back in 2020 to chase the American Dream, Piedt is back in the Test set-up through a combination of fortune and his own performances. The first iteration of his Test career saw him take 26 wickets in nine Tests at an average of 45.19, but he did show hints of being a Test-quality spinner. He took four-wicket hauls in his first three innings, and does have a five-wicket haul at Test level vs England, so he has shown proof of concept when it comes to Test quality. But it’s been four-and-a-half years since his last Test, a horror performance in Ranchi, where he took 1/101 in 18 overs as he struggled for both control and penetration. His 26 wickets have come at an average of 18.53 in FC cricket this season, so much like Hamza, he’ll be a man with something to prove while being in red-hot form.
- Keegan Petersen
It was a toss-up between Petersen and Bedingham for this last spot. I suppose I could have made this a six-person list, but ultimately, that would have been extra work that I was not really looking to put out. With 130 FC games and nearly 8000 runs, Petersen is a proven performer. But, having shown real promise during the 2021-22 India series, where he scored 276 runs at an average of 46, he’s failed to quite kick on. It’s been nearly two years since he scored a fifty at Test level. Petersen was dropped from the side for the second India Test, and while I’m sure some would call it a squad composition dropping, given the fact that the team went with an extra bowler, the reality is you don’t drop your number four batsman for “composition” purposes, especially when your captain has already been ruled out for injury. 343 runs at FC level at an average of 38.11 isn’t bad, but it’s also not good. Still, he’s scored three scores in excess of fifty in his four SA “A” innings, including a century, so maybe he’s turned a corner.
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