Cricket: Bitter taste of defeat will drive S Africans

By Richard Boock

CHRISTCHURCH - Whatever one might think of this South African cricket side, enjoying a loss is not one of their strong points.

The team who recently whitewashed the West Indies in a test series before running off with the one-dayers 6-1, took the defeat in Dunedin on Sunday particularly hard, vice-captain Shaun Pollock said yesterday.

South Africa's audacious approach at the batting crease foundered against nothing much more than an inquisitive Kiwi attack, and their fielding effort was below the standard set in recent seasons.

Pollock, rated by at least one ranking system as the best allrounder in the world, said the loss at Carisbrook had been like a dose of bad medicine for the tourists.

"I've been playing for a few years now but I don't think I've ever played in a team which hates losing as much as this one," he said after practice. "We weren't happy at all after Sunday's result. We knew we should have done better.

"On the other hand, if there was any initial complacency, there's certainly none now. We've all been reminded what it's like to lose and it's a feeling we don't want to have after the second match.

"So it's served a purpose, that loss. It's put things back into perspective for us."

The son of South African fast bowler Peter Pollock and the nephew of one of the great batsmen in world cricket, Graeme Pollock, Shaun was perhaps destined to be handy with both bat and ball.

Graeme Pollock ended his test career with a batting average second only to Sir Donald Bradman (using 20 innings as a threshold), while Peter Pollock took 116 wickets in just 28 test matches.

Shaun went past that number in his 29th outing and is just the second South African to have taken 100 wickets and scored a 1000 runs in tests.

The man former England captain Michael Atherton once described as the most difficult fast bowler in the world to face was made captain of the South African side at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, and appears to be viewed as the natural successor to Hansie Cronje.

However, he was hardly in invincible form in the first match of this Bank of New Zealand series, going for 22 off three overs when he opened the bowling, and struggling to make any impression with the bat.

South Africa will not name their 12 until just before the toss this afternoon, but the word from their camp was that Gary Kirsten might be dropped, with either Darryl Cullinan or Steve Elworthy brought in, and that Lance Klusener or Mark Boucher could look forward to batting promotions.

New Zealand: Dion Nash (captain), Nathan Astle, Matt Horne, Craig McMillan, Roger Twose, Adam Parore, Chris Harris, Matt Bell, Daniel Vettori, Gavin Larsen, Simon Doull, Geoff Allott.

South Africa (from):Hansie Cronje (captain), Gary Kirsten, Herschelle Gibbs, Jacques Kallis, Darryl Cullinan, Jonty Rhodes, Dale Benkenstein, Shaun Pollock, Lance Klusener, Mark Boucher, Pat Symcox, Allan Donald, Steve Elworthy, Nico Boje.