South Africa have bowled 23 no-balls during the ongoing second and final Test against Pakistan at Newlands in Cape Town.
Fast bowler Kagiso Rabada has bowled 10 of these – and all-rounder Wiaan Mulder eight. Left-armer Marco Jansen has bowled five.
“It’s disappointing. It’s something that creeps into the game every now and then. We probably started a little bit with that problem in Bangladesh and sorted it out. Now it’s crept back in,” said Proteas Test bowling coach Piet Botha, who was appointed in early 2023.
“With Wiaan, what we’re really trying to do is to get him to run in a little bit harder because he wants to be a bowler that is a fourth seamer in attack and be a little bit quicker.
“One of the aspects we worked on is for him to run in a little bit harder and that brought its own issues. We worked on it this morning a bit, and it seemed to work for a while. For others it may be different on different days.
“Sometimes it’s the ground, sometimes it’s the wind, sometimes it’s fatigue, sometimes it’s the slope. But it’s obviously something we have to pay attention to it again and make sure we fix it.”
Pakistan are following on after being bowled out for 194 in response to the Proteas’ 615 all out. They have since moved to 213 for one. Captain Shan Masood will resume with an unbeaten century on day four on Monday.
“You have to be attacking. We can’t defend because of the position we are in. We have to keep slips and a gully in and have to use our bounce, even though it the pitch is not quick. Once the batters are set, it seems to be quite easy to rotate. So you can go defensive, but we’re not in that situation. We have to attack,” added Botha.
“We have a very good couple of Tests where we’ve knocked teams over but these things we always talk about: discipline and patience. Once you get frustrated or start searching a bit too much like we might have done in the second innings, you’re going at fours and fives runs an over. That’s what you don’t want to do. Let’s go back to try and see if we can go at threes and a false shot will come.”
Botha was head coach of South Western Districts in division two of domestic cricket in South Africa before joining the Proteas’ support staff.
He played 118 first-class fixtures, mostly for Border, from the late 1980s to early 2000s.
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