Exclusive: South Africa Must Conquer Spin to Keep Champions Trophy Hopes Alive, Says Batting Coach

South Africa have made giant strides in ICC tournaments in recent times, and as they gear up to mount another challenge for an ICC title they have once tasted the thrill of winning, an opportunity to capture another historic moment awaits.

An opportunity to repeat history

South Africa haven't won an ICC tournament since winning the 1998 Champions Trophy. They recently reached the semi-finals of the same format in the 2023 ICC 50-over World Cup hosted by India before losing to champions Australia by three wickets.

On paper, Rob Walter will take with him one of the strongest teams to the tournament. It will be a team that will be fully capable of beating any team on their day, but as history has proven before, what will count the most is what happens on the field of play.

One of the key areas of focus will be how they approach spin in different phases of matches on wickets that will offer some assistance.

It is well documented that South African teams have had their fair share of troubles with spin in times gone by. It is an area that they have improved on massively, but once in a while they do get caught napping, even in their backyard.

The wickets will have value for good cricket

The Proteas will play all three of their group matches in Pakistan and the pitches in that part of the world are generally good for batting.

But with this being a tournament that will have a lot of cricket and some wickets repeated, the expectation will be for some of them to take spin at some point, and batting coach Imraan Khan told Sportsboom.com that even when that happens, it will not affect them that much if they stick to the basics.

“I think the wickets will be very good for batting; obviously it’s a tournament still and there will be a volume of cricket and it might become tougher in certain phases of the games," Khan told SportsBoom.com. 

“How we play spin in the middle period will be important, and batting against the new ball this time of the year, there could be a little bit of swing upfront and those are some of the skill sets we will be looking to focus on going into the tournament.”

The former Proteas batter went on to say that the plans are in place, but delivery will be key to ensuring that things go according to plan.

“We do a lot of homework behind the scenes in terms of watching footage and trying to analyse and understand the opposition bowlers as best as we possibly can.”

“It's important that our boys keep it nice and simple and be very clear in terms of what their rotation and boundary options are, as well as trusting their process to go and execute.

Adjusting from the SA20

The majority of the Proteas squad has been playing a lot of T20 matches from the recently concluded SA20 and with the requirements of the 50-over game, Khan believes that it will not be hard to make the switch into this format.

“It is a little bit of a shift changing from the shorter to a longer format, but the nice thing is that the guys are really playing some really good cricket at the moment.”

“If I look at the batters that will be in the Champions Trophy squad, a lot of them had some really good SA20 for their respective clubs so that is a positive.”

“They can take a lot of confidence from that and obviously when a player is confident, I don’t really think it matters which format they are playing because they take the momentum with them through the different formats.”

“That is something we can take out of the challenge of moving from the T20 format into the 50-over format.”

Tapping into the mental space

The 40-year-old added that sometimes, when the need arises, he does need to tap into the batter's mental space to help improve them on their shortfalls.

“We are living in a high-performance world, and guys want to go out there and put in good performances all the time. I think what we could probably try and separate is if the player is following his processes and if he is, then that will be good.”

“But if it's a technical issue, we focus on that, but we do try to separate the outcome from the processes; if a player is indeed following those, then a performance is generally around the corner.”