At No. 6, Bedingham has been the best batter during Conrad’s time with the team, but he too is now positioned at No. 3.
“We obviously need to look at how we can improve the side without being knee-jerk in our decision-making and panicky. We need to show composure,” he said. “The question is always, will it make the boat go faster if we make changes, or will it slow the boat down? And we’re constantly looking at how we can make the boat go faster.”
The easiest outside solution will be to bring back de Zorzi, the most-used opener alongside Markram in the previous World Test Championship cycle. That would also allow Conrad to either drop Rickelton or move him into the middle order and drop Kyle Verreynne instead, who has not scored a fifty in 13 Test innings. The problem with that is that de Zorzi is still recovering from a hamstring injury and will be assessed on Friday, which may be too late to include him for a Test that starts on Sunday. That means Conrad might be forced to look elsewhere.
All this may read like South Africa need a major shuffling of the deck chairs, and that they could ring in several changes ahead of the second Test. In broader contexts, that’s not a calamity or a catastrophe. However, in cricketing ways, it may seem so, and Conrad will want to avoid that. He may simply stick with the players he has and ask them to change their approach, though he recognised that could be more difficult than it sounds.
“We keep talking about the batting because that’s where we felt we let ourselves down the most. Dismissals in batting sit in one of three places. They are technical, tactical or mental,” Conrad said. “If we’re brutally honest, a lot of our dismissals sat in the mental corner. Is that an easier fix than technical and tactical? Probably not. So we need to see our guys pull up fresh enough.
“Aiden showed us in the second innings that there’s nothing fancy about Test match cricket. That single-bloody-mindedness, where I’ve got to bat for a day and a half now, irrespective of what it looks like – some of our batters can take a leaf from his book. There’s always noise, and I think… the top players are able to park that noise, and still be able to execute what they wanted to do.”
