Rob Walter offers insights into South Africa’s T20 World Cup squad selection

South Africa coach Rob Walter ( Photo source : X / Twitter )

Selections are mostly guided by recent T20I performances, ensuring that the chosen players are in tune with the demands of the forthcoming T20 World Cup. However, as far as South Africa is concerned, they’ve played any T20I series in the year of the mega-event, having played their previous couple of series at home against Australia and India, in the months of August-September and December, respectively.

Former South African cricketer and the current white-ball coach of the South African team, Rob Walter remarked that there were several yardsticks like recent performances and the previous ones as well as the ones prior to last year, the framework of the squad, and the latent circumstances to be confronted with regards to the conditions in store in the USA and the Caribbean. Walter also credited the age-old intuition of a coach.

“There are various criteria. Performances this year, performances over the last year, historical performances further back than that, the make-up of squads, the potential conditions that we are going to have to balance. And then, there’s the good old-fashioned coach’s gut feeling.” stated Walter in an interview with Daily Maverick.

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Speaking about speedsters Anrich Nortje and Marco Jansen, who’ve had a pretty low-grade IPL 2024 for their respective franchises according to their own standards till now, Walter remarked that he has full faith in the calibre and the prowess of these players. He was confident of Nortje getting into his groove in the remainder of the IPL, and was pleased with the pacer clocking up higher speeds than before, in addition to enhanced volumes of playtime as well as practice sessions. He stated that he, along with the team management were continually communicating with the players as well as making sure that they were putting forth the needful effort.

“I trust the quality of the players. Anrich has another month before the World Cup starts. [I] have no doubt that he will hit his straps. It’s good to see that his speed is up, along with playing time and training. He’ll start to get his feel [of the game] back, no doubt. And with Marco [Jansen], the same. We are in touch with these guys continuously, ensuring that they are putting in the work,” noted Walter.

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15-member provisional squad of South Africa for T20 World Cup 2024: Aiden Markram (c), Quinton de Kock (wk), Reeza Hendricks, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Tristan Stubbs, David Miller, Ryan Rickelton (wk), Marco Jansen, Ottniel Baartman, Bjorn Fortuin, Keshav Maharaj, Tabraiz Shamsi, Anrich Nortje, Kagiso Rabada, Gerald Coetzee 

Travelling Reserves: Nandre Burger, Lungi Ngidi