Arthur plots ODI road forward

2008-09-04 12:23

London - Proteas' coach Mickey Arthur, has much food for thought as he plots the way forward for the Standard Bank national ODI squad following the 4-0 series defeat against England.

The Proteas' next assignment in this format of the game is the five games they play at home against Kenya and Bangladesh at the end of October and in the first half of November.

"We are trying to identify a brand of cricket to play in the one-day game and then identify players to pick to play that kind of brand," commented Arthur. "In the past we have been lucky to have a lot of multi-skilled players which has made it seem that we had 12 or even 13 players on the field at the same time.

"This is what England had in the recent series with Andrew Flintoff giving them two players in one.

"We will now have to decide whether we can continue to follow the multi-skilled route or whether we need to go for pure specialists."

Bigger pool

Arthur is totally open minded about the composition of the new side and is not ruling out the older brigade at this stage but at the same time he has indicated he wants to look at the domestic game.

With the amount of limited overs cricket being played these days, of both the 20 and 50 overs variety, there is simply the need for a bigger pool of players from which to select.

"I'm going to take a couple of weeks to go away and reflect and then come to those selection decisions," he said.

"We've got five one-dayers at the end of October and early November against Kenya and Bangladesh, which will give us a good base to start from with a young new side.

"We'll look at the squad composition closer to the time. The South African A side have five ODIs against their Sri Lankan counterparts this month and I will look at the performances there. There are also a couple of players currently outside South African selection in the England county championship that I may want to look at."

- SAPA