South Africa's conundrum: spin to win or is pace their ace?

The moment Sune Luus missed an attempted sweep to be out LBW, you almost knew. Perhaps, Lizelle Lee’s hara-kiri in attempted a wild shot against Poonam Yadav asserted it. Probably Laura Wolvaardt and Nadine de Klerk’s partnership just delayed it.



But you knew.



The going so far for the Indian bowlers, especially spinners, has been quite easy. South Africa have found it difficult to stay in the middle against India’s spinners, let alone find ways and means to score runs. Lee and Wolvaardt’s dismissals reflect the desperation they felt as the dot-balls stacked up.



Missing a sweep shot is understandable. In a fickle format like T20s, holing out near the boundary fence is, on most occasions, acceptable too. But Lee’s shot seemed like she wanted to get out of jail.



Poonam Yadav, in a surprising tactic, began from round the wicket. Lee tried the sweep but failed to get it past short fine leg. She then looked at the off side but failed to pierce it. Another swipe found the fielder around the corner on the on side. Three dots. Pressure rising.



She then decided to move across the stumps and kneel down to thrash the ball over deep backward square leg fence. But the attempt was an unsuccessful one as she ended up finding Smriti Mandhana on the fence. It was the seventh over of the innings and South Africa had 25 runs on the board. Such an atrocious attempt was uncalled for.



Wolvaardt, too, was bowled by Harmanpreet Kaur as she finished having an ugly swish in the morning to a ball that arrived in the afternoon. It was just then that she was starting to get a move on, having got a decent measure of the surface.



“After today I think it is just a confidence thing. I don’t think we are bad players of spin,” said South Africa’s captain Luus, fronting up to the media after the match.



“Generally we are pretty good with that. It becomes difficult to find the momentum you want after losing games one after the other. Going into the game tomorrow, we are either going to get a win out of it or come and sit here with a loss again. But it is about getting the mindset ready.”



Just earlier in the day, the men’s side playing a Test match against India in Vishakhapatnam, were reduced to three for 39 at the end of the day – all three wickets falling to the spin duo of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. Is spin really a worry for the entire of South Africa? Is it in the mindset or is there a technical flaw? It is open for analysis.



Sunil Gavaskar, commentating in the Test match, spoke about how the South Africa men's team didn’t actually play to their strengths. He believed that South Africa traditionally have banked on pace to get their job done but erred in selecting three spinners for this Test match.



Glancing at how the touring women have gone about with their selection shows a similar pattern. They have pushed a very young Nonkuleleku Mlaba, the left-arm spinner, on to the big stage without wasting much time. They have also gone on to bowl a number of overs of spin to the Indians, who have made merry.



In the fourth T20I, the two spinners – Luus and Mlaba – combined went for a total of 38 runs in their four overs. Mlaba had been given the ball when Kaur had come to the crease and the Indian captain just belted the slow left-arm bowler out of the attack.



In the opening match of the series also, the visiting spinners gave away 58 runs in the six overs they bowled. However, they seem to be learning with every outing of theirs as on Thursday (October 3), they gave away just 17 runs in the three overs bowled.



Adapting to the conditions and the pitch is something they would have to work and they needn’t look beyond senior seamer Shabnim Ismail. “I always tell the captain to give me two balls to sum up the wicket. I have done that pretty well in the past three games,” she said, after the fifth T20I. Her job is to assess the pitch for the other bowlers in her side, apart from performing with the ball.



“I always come out on the field knowing that there is no target and (I am) meant to do what I do the best.”



Although the series is lost, South Africa have nothing to lose and their pathway to getting their first win on the tour could be the going the pacy way.