Player Strength and weakness

[Craig]

This is for South Africa:

GC Smith:
Strengths: One of the best if not the best player through the leg and on side and a strong puller through square in the world. He plays a strong cut shot and is a proud and passionate person who is a natural leader of his country. If anyone who can lead a South African side to beat Australia, Smith can.
Weakness: It comes as no surprise on what it is. He plays away from his body during the cover area and the lack of footwork prevents him from driving without getting a top edge and venerable in the gully, deep point region. Also his bat turns in his hands forcing him to play it onto the on side. He is making attempts to fix that problem to his credit. Also his cut shot can also be a weakness if there are fielders there.
HH Gibbs:
Strengths: A wonderful naturally elegant aggressive stroke maker. He is strong through the cover area and is able to play all the shots. He is become more consistent batsman and more mature and is able to play long innings and bat through an innings then what he may have previously have done. Gibbs is also an excellent fielder in the point region, considered to be one of the best in the world.
Weakness: No really obvious batting weakness in his batting technique, except that being tied down and may tend to hit him self out of trouble by hitting a boundary or two and may get out. Also has a tendency to hit in the air through cover and point. Gibbs also has the habit of being caught on the crease as well.
JA Rudolph:
Strengths: Extremely talented young player who has a big future in either form of the game. Rudolph has the temperament to play long innings and the talent to do so. Is strong through the cover region and onside and has an ability to find gaps and score quick enough in the one-day game. Also has potential as a part-time leg spinner.
Weakness: Confidence. One of his two main flaws is his confidence and that he tends to fall over himself making himself prone to LBWs. It appears he tends to lose confidence easily when he makes a succession of low scores. When balls are pitched straight on the stumps, he tends to play around the front pad and tends to fall over himself and thus loses balances and is a candidate for LBW.
JH Kallis:
Strengths: Arguably one of South Africa’s greatest ever players in both forms of the game. He has a good technique and can play both spin and pace with ease and can play all the shots and has the ability to make very big scores. He is also a fine slip fielder and a handy enough bowler.
Weakness: There is really none in his batting, except to short straight quick bowling as Kallis doesn’t often play the hook or pull shot. He actually plays the shot to an acceptable standard, but it isn’t a frequent shot. His batting can be a bit too slow and doesn’t look for more singles, but in recent times he has quickened up his pace of his batting.
G Kirsten:
Strengths: One of South Africa’s leading premier batsmen in Test cricket and has had success in the Limited Overs game and is also a former Test captain (for one Test). Strong through the off side and favours the cut shot and is strong off the back foot. Kirsten had opened for much of his Test career, scoring the majority of his runs as an opener, but since he has dropped down the order and to his credit he has still been consistent run scorer. He has achieved his goals of 7,000 Test runs and 20 Test tons. Kirsten has the reputation of playing long innings and once batted over 14 hours to save South Africa in a Test is credit to his mental strength.
Weakness: His tendency to play the horizontal shots through with an angled bat always making him a chance to play the ball onto his stumps and has been dismissed in that way in the past when playing cut shots. Usually a decent enough fielder, he is prone to make the odd fielding error.
ND McKenzie:
Strengths: Neil McKenzie has earned himself a reputation as a very good player of pace bowling and often an under-rated player of pace bowling. Also to his credit he has made himself into a good player of spin bowling. McKenzie is a strong hooker and puller and a strong cutter of the ball. He is also a fine under-rated one-day batsman.
Weakness: McKenzie is a real confidence player. Requiring belief in him self to keep on performing. But that is also due to his superstitions where as he cant step on a white line when batting and that makes susceptible to sledges that he stepped on a line and that can affect him mentally. He is also a nervous starter.
MV Boucher:
Strengths: Known for his wicket keeping prowess and being South Africa’s all-time Test and ODI wicket keeping record (i.e. catches) and is on track to break the all-time record. Boucher is pretty good behind the stumps and it is seldom that misses a chance when keeping and usually saves all the potential byes. He is handy lower order batsman as well. Boucher has a good head on his shoulders and the fact he is also remained really injury free throughout his whole credit must be given credit to him.
Weakness: When batting and when he is tied down, he can be tempted to do something rash and perhaps not consistent enough. During 2003, he went through a form slump with the gloves misses chances and did concede too many byes, although to be fair to him, it was to some wayward bowling. The role as captain affects him mentally and he doesn’t appear comfortable with the extra responsibility.
SM Pollock:
Strengths: One of South Africa’s greatest ever bowlers. His nagging line and length around outside off stump makes him hard to score and with his superb accuracy gets him lots of wickets. He has managed to cut back his pace but that to his credit hasn’t affected his bowled in anyway. Also can get movement and has a good off cutter. He can also bat down the order and score some important runs with his hard hitting.
Weakness: None really in his bowling. Except mainly that in non helpful conditions he may not be as effective if he were bowling in helpful conditions. He often drops far too many catches at slip, but he really shouldn’t be fielding in the slips during mid spell when bowling.
AJ Hall:
Strengths: One of the most inspirational cricketers after being shot and mugged and being kidnapped when selling his car and is playing international cricket. Hall is fairly nippy with the ball and in some helpful conditions he can be a handful. Hall can also wield the willow to an acceptable standard. Hall can also keep wicket if need be.
Weakness: Nothing overly special as a cricketer. He doesn’t get a good seam conditions so in helpful conditions he may not be able to exploit it to his fully potential.
A Nel:
Strengths: Full of confidence, full of attitude and full of pace sums up André Nel best. Talented and is accurate is also one of Nel’s main strengths as a bowler as is his ability to get seam movement. Nel has an aggressive nature when he bowls which follows up with a mean steer, but the best thing is that he able to back it up with wickets. Nel can get pretty quick and hostile as well which can make him hard to play when he is in full rhythm.
Weakness: Inconsistency in the limited overs game and the fact that Nel can go overboard with his aggression and boarder on to stupidity. Nel has become very consistent of late in the Test match arena, but of late his consistency in the limited overs game leaves a lot to be desired though. But he doesn’t appear to have a lot of weakness in his bowling though.
M Ntini:
Strengths: Super fit and can be super quick and pretty hostile and can be pretty awkward are some of the main strengths of Makhaya Ntini. Ntini fits the bill for Graeme Smith as the perfect strike bowler for South Africa. Ntini is also a fine fielder as well and is pretty quick athlete. A popular man and idol to coloured South Africans and South Africans in general and as a habit on the 3rd morning of each Test he goes and runs 10km.
Weakness: As much as he is a strike bowler, he does tend to bowl quite a few four balls in his spells. Also his action which is apparently similar to Malcolm Marshall, he tends to go wide of the crease which makes it very hard to get LBWs and to bowl batsmen other then a poor stroke. Also his action isn’t very suited to bowling around the wicket as his action doesn’t allow him to get off the wicket quick enough and thus has a bad habit of running on the wicket which has got him into trouble in the past.

Just for the record I did this over a week and this from the last Test they played.

[Eclipse]

Well done Craig quite accurate IMO.
But I must ask is there any particular reason why you did this??

If you are just doing it for the hell of it then I might do one on Australia.

[Craig]

Its going to be a future feature article soon.

[marc71178]

Originally posted by Craig
Also his cut shot can also be a weakness if there are fielders there.

I think most batsmens shots are weaknesses when fielders are there!

[Armadillo]

Very impressive, a very accurate account IMO. However for Jacques Kallis I think you need to mention a bit more on his bowling.

[Craig]

In what areas?

[Mr Mxyzptlk]

Jacques Kallis is a particularly useful bowler in Tests because he has a good offcutter which he tends to use regularly, forcing the batsman to mistime the ball. In Tests, he gets more than a useful amount of swing when he's at his best.

[Langeveldt]

Great stuff Craig, i couldnt have put it any better myself...

[Neil Pickup]

Gibbs chops on too much.

[Mr Mxyzptlk]

Originally posted by Neil Pickup
Gibbs chops on too much.

Agreed. You say that Gibbs has no obvious technical deficiency, yet it's pretty obvious that he has a big gap between bat and pad a lot of the time and chops on occasionally.

[Richard]

One thing I'd quibble with is your assesment of Makhaya Ntini - when bowling best, he's very, very accurate. If Smith put third-men in more often I'm confident he'd go for less runs in these times. He does have times (eg the England tour and the Third West Indies Test, Gayle and all that) when he loses his accuracy, unlike Pollock, but he's not one of those bowlers who has an accuracy problem.

[Eclipse]

Originally posted by Neil Pickup
Gibbs chops on too much.

Way to much!!

He also does not cover his offstump that well but talent seem's to let him get away with it. You will notice his first movment is back and to the legside not very conventional for an opener.

[Craig]

Originally posted by Richard
One thing I'd quibble with is your assesment of Makhaya Ntini - when bowling best, he's very, very accurate. If Smith put third-men in more often I'm confident he'd go for less runs in these times. He does have times (eg the England tour and the Third West Indies Test, Gayle and all that) when he loses his accuracy, unlike Pollock, but he's not one of those bowlers who has an accuracy problem.

So inconsisent with accuracy?

[Richard]

Originally posted by Eclipse
Way to much!!

He also does not cover his offstump that well but talent seem's to let him get away with it. You will notice his first movment is back and to the legside not very conventional for an opener.

And yet he still manages to average in the late 40s in Test-cricket.
Technical flaws don't matter if they don't keep getting you out cheaply. Similarly, a copybook technique is no use whatsoever unless you use it to score runs.

[Richard]

Originally posted by Craig
So inconsisent with accuracy?

Yeah, very much so.
Personally, I'd have put it something like this:
M Ntini
Strengths:
When bowling at his best, he will move the ball off the seam if there's grass on the wicket, and if there isn't he'll use the off-cutter and leg-cutter to good effect, hence troubling any batsman on any surface. He can maintain a very good line and can quite easily bowl a long spell going for barely 2-an-over. He has a powerful arm and is a very athletic ground-fielder. His straightforward, open-chested action allows him to vary his length almost at will, rather than being a metranomic bowler like his opening partner. While he can adopt an approach of short-pitched bowling at times, he never lets himself get carried away with activities outside the delivery of the ball.
Weaknesses:
While he has shown the ability to bowl with extreme accuracy more often than not, he does also have spells where his radar totally breaks down and he can bowl far too many deliveries that any batsman will aim to hit to the boundary. While he has moved in his angle on the crease for a typical delivery, he still does not have a variant where he is right next to the stumps, making it often tough to get lbws given. When bowling around the wicket the angle of his run has at times caused problems with running in the protected area.