Surprise changes to SA A team after easy victory

Centurion: One of the national selectors, Clive Rice, paid what appeared to be a ``courtesy call'' at SuperSport Park yesterday and got an eyeful of why South Africa A have become the professional, unbeatable side they are.

He then left his calling card in the dressing room and gave the management team an insight into the sort of muddled thinking the national selectors are applying to what is, in essence, a prestige side by announcing three changes to the team which thrashed Sri Lanka A by an innings and 116 runs with more than a day in hand.

Rice did not stick around long enough to see Dale Benkensteins side wipe the floor with their Sri Lanka A opponents but the fall out from his announcement is going to take some time before ruffled feathers are smoothed over.

Nothing has been officially released but from all accounts Nic Pothas, Neil McKenzie and David Terbrugge have been relieved of their places which have been handed over to Justin Kemp, Wendell Bossenger and Arno Jacobs.

Whispers in the A Team corridors suggest the two Gauteng and Northerns players have been released to strengthen the combined Northerns/Gauteng XI to play the England in the run up to the Test a week later.

While no one can argue with Kemp s selection, those of Jacobs (North-West) and Bossenger (Griqualand West) is stretching credibility a bit far as neither player are yet worthy of A Team status: not while Carl Bradfield and Ian Mitchell are around. Bossenger was last season s leading wicketkeeper in terms of dismissals, but it does not make him the best.

But Rice, a mean enough fast bowler in his day to have Kerry Packer rushing for his signature in the rebel era, no doubt had enough notes from Rushdie Majiet and the other selectors to pass on to Benkenstein and the SA A team management about the healthy state of South Africa s fast bowling.

The changes suggest that the national selectors are prescribing to whoever is in entrusted with the selection of the Northerns/Gauteng XI for the game starting on Thursday.

At least the best attendance of the season in Centurion yesterday Mornantau Hayward, now sporting a blond thatch from an overdose of highlights instead of the ginger we all knew, the tall athletic Victor Mpitsang and Terbrugge seriously manhandled the visiting Sri Lanka A batsmen with the sort of vigorous pace and aggression which would give most Test teams an unpleasant taste of fire and brimstone.

While on Friday it was Hayward who collected the honours with his five wickets, yesterday it was the combined pace and swing of Terbrugge and Mpitsang who wrecked the tourists a second time in two days South Africa A needing only 132.4 overs, four sessions and 51 minutes to destroy a side whose batsmen were outclassed and undone by the pace of the pitch and the bounce the three fast bowlers manufactured out of the conditions.

Benkenstein rotated them well, too, in the sort of enervating heat which would tire most fast bowlers for long spells, but making sure he always had one of his strike bowlers in action. Mpitsang was the more impressive of the three before lunch and again when brought back shortly before tea. His three for 42 was typical of the economy of his bowling, generating pace throughout his five spells yet being punished for the loose ball.

Although Sajith Fernando and the stand-in captain Thilan Samaraweera did what they could to rescue a lost cause, both at least showed there was batting spine in a side which has an average age of 22.

Yet their new manager, Brendon Kuruppu, the former Sri Lanka wicketkeeper and now a member of the national selectors, would be the first admit the first of two four-day games against South Africa A was lost by tea on the first day.

Winning the toss, bowlers whose direction was both sides of the wicket, sloppy fielding and lack of a gameplan placed the side under pressure. Dropping Mark Bruyns twice did not help their cause either and as the manager no doubt pointed out there is a lot of work to do if they hope to make a contest of the game at Alexandra Oval in Pietermaritzburg starting on Thursday.