Shukri Conrad has given a few hints regarding his selection policy with the latest Proteas Test squad. Perhaps the most telling picks are the three men who are in line for Test debuts.
Two of those new faces are players who are a little bit older and have a lot of First-Class cricket under their belts. Conrad and the selection panel have shown a willingness to be forgiving and to put the team’s interests first by picking David Bedingham.
Bedingham abandoned an attempt to become England-qualified, and Conrad appears keen to reward the Western Province batter for his decision to return to South African cricket as he has made a decent but not spectacular start to the First Class season.
The middle-order batter is 29-years-old, but that won’t bother Conrad, who might be eager to ensure he has a number of red-ball specialists at his disposal to protect his ambitions of a tilt at the World Test Championship from being hampered by the never-ending carousel of ICC white-ball tournaments.
Another new call-up is left-arm fast-medium bowler Nandre Burger, whose experience must be a huge factor. Burger doesn’t have the miles on the clock that many 28-year-old seamers might and gives the Proteas that elusive, a little something different. It seems that Burger is more likely to play if Marco Jansen isn’t in the equation, although he isn’t really a like for like replacement.
While Burger’s batting is better than his stats point to, it certainly isn’t part of what brings him to this dance. Burger could have more of a role to play in New Zealand than in the home series against India, and could find the home Tests will be an embedding into the squad.
Proteas management have not been shy in backing Tristan Stubbs, but this summer, he might be in line to ‘finally’ make his Test debut. This may be a trial from both ends as Stubbs could feel pressure to limit his red-ball cricket given his immense potential in T20s.
Stubbs will get his taste of Test cricket, and the Proteas will soon learn whether they will be able to call on him in the format for years to come.
There are few surprises in the Proteas Test squad, with a group largely made up of players with proven track records in the format and those who have made promising starts to their careers in the format.
Conrad’s recall of Kyle Verreynne ahead of Heinrich Klaasen is also telling and speaks to his desire to mould his own Test group, even if the Western Province wicketkeeper bat has also been picked for the ODIs.
While Conrad has been able to secure assurances that the Test Series against India, which forms part of the World Test Championship, will be prioritised across the summer with key multi-format stars rested from portions of the white-ball programme, the coach will need to take a skeleton crew to New Zealand for an equally important series in the same Championship in February.
This could see Conrad freezing out multi-format stars in the name of having a dedicated Test crew pulling towards the goal of winning the WTC, which has to be the aim of any elite member nation’s Test mentor.
