Replacing Pollock
The Pollock Position has been a headache for the Proteas for years
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South Africa selected Ryan McLaren for the series against Kenya. His name was on the team sheet released to the press. The Proteas were smarting from a 4-0 drubbing at the hands of England. Mickey Arthur and Cricket South Africa felt that McLaren was the answer to a lot of their problems, the all-rounder was excelling with bat and ball in domestic and county cricket. The only problem was that McLaren was tied to a Kolpak contract until 2010 and CSA had not made contact with Kent.
McLaren was desperate to play for South Africa. So, while the boards made their feelings known in the press, McLaren handed in numerous requests to Kent for them to release him from his contract. In reply, Kent turned him down numerous times because they had built their team around him. McLaren was supposed to be the first Pollock replacement, but the man picked to replace Shaun Pollock couldn’t replace Pollock immediately.
Two Pollocks have defined positions in the batting order. Before South African fans knew it as the Kallis berth, the number four position in red-ball cricket was known as the Pollock Position. Graeme Pollock played 41 Tests and batted at four in 37 of them. In his 27-year first-class career, Pollock never vacated the number four berth and he excelled there.
In the 1990s, Graeme’s nephew, Shaun, created another Pollock Position. From November 1991 to today, 34 players have come out to bat at number seven in ODIs for the Proteas. Only six have batted there in 20 or more innings, and only one has done so 50 or more times: Shaun Pollock. Pollock walked out to bat at seven 81 times and averaged 29.69 runs at a strike rate of 81.88.
If you go back to the beginning of South African ODI cricket until 2008, seam-bowling all-rounders were a normal part of their teams. As they tried to find their feet in limited-overs cricket, South Africa couldn’t decide whether they preferred Brian McMillan at seven or eight, so they split his time between the two slots. McMillan shared the number seven duties with Dave Richardson, a wicketkeeper-batter, and Richard Snell, a seam bowler who could bat a little.
Richardson did okay and Snell was not as good as Richardson. McMillan did well in the slot in his limited time there, but no one associates his name with the position. The emergence of a new generation of allrounders that included Hansie Cronje, Lance Klusener and Shaun Pollock saw McMillan’s permanent displacement from the number seven slot. But it was Pollock who laid claim to the slot, made it his and went on to define it.
Pollock was perfect for the position. He was a front-line bowler with half of his uncle's ability with the bat and all of the older Pollock’s intent. Graeme Pollock's philosophy was to attack the bowlers. Pollock gave South Africa the luxury of a long batting line-up and a five-person bowling attack. With a Pollock-type of player in the side, the Proteas fielded 12 players at a time.
Pollock has a career batting average of 29.69 at number seven in ODIs. He had a quiet start to his ODI career with the bat at number seven, averaging less than 20 in his first three years and then exploding to almost 40 between 1999 and 2002. From 2002 to his retirement in 2008, Pollock averaged 31.44 at a strike rate of 91.50 at number seven.
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South Africa’s seam bowling all-rounders conveyor belt ran dry with Pollock’s retirement. This did not make sense for a team that traditionally had a phalanx of all-rounders. At the 1999 World Cup, South Africa had so many all-rounders that their sixth option was not a part-timer, and they batted all the way to number nine. You know who came in at nine? Mark Boucher.
In 2008/09 they were so desperate for an allrounder they considered calling back an ageing Dale Benkenstein. In 2008, Benkenstein was 34. He was no spring chicken. South Africa’s panic was justifiable, after 2008, the Proteas just stopped making runs at number seven.
Ryan McLaren was the first in a long line of Pollock replacements that didn’t work out. It is possible the decline could have been less severe during McLaren’s time had he been used properly. But, he wasn’t.
When he finally managed to manoeuvre his way out of his contract with Kent by forfeiting a year of his contract, CSA made all the right noises. They were happy he was available and all that jazz. But, they were already looking at other options. Between 2009 and 2012, McLaren played 13 of the Proteas' 39 matches.
During that time, South Africa was also looking at Johan Botha, Albie Morkel, Colin Ingram, JP Duminy, Wayne Parnell, and Morne van Wyk, among others, for the position. When you look at it closely, it seemed as if CSA was throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what stuck. Nothing stuck.
It took McLaren four years to play double-digit games and just as long for him to average more than 20 runs. But, he never quite succeeded in the number seven position, the Pollock position, where he played the bulk of his ODI matches. In the end, McLaren had one decent year. In 2013 he averaged 28.61 with the bat. That is also the only year he was given a decent run in the team. His good year coincided with the rise of Chris Morris and Farhaan Behardien.
Morris and Behardien did a job for a bit. They showed up with their primary skills. Behardien’s batting was one and a half times better than Pollock’s, but his bowling didn’t meet the Pollock standard, and Morris was a talented bowler whose batting didn’t meet the Pollock standard. They might have worked better playing together.
In 2016/17, the Proteas tried Dwaine Pretorius, David Wiese and Wayne Parnell in addition to Morris and Behardien. They were back to their 2009 ways of spaghetti hurling and walls. It was also then that they discovered Andile Phehlukwayo and Wiaan Mulder. Mulder and Phehlukwayo were the next big things.
Phehlukwayo was a young and exciting prospect. At 19, he was the Dolphins’ leading wicket-taker in the CSA T20 Challenge and at 20, he shepherded the Proteas to victory while David Miller slogged at the other end. In his second ODI innings, Phehlukwayo scored an unbeaten 42 off 39. David Miller added 75 to their match-winning 117-run partnership.
Phehlukwayo showed the world that he didn’t carry a heavy bat for show, he knew how to use it. He had a Lance Klusener-type approach to batting, which was no surprise. Klusener oversaw Phehlukwayo's development. Then one day he just couldn't hit the ball off the square. His batting returns mimicked the trajectory Proteas' runs at number seven had been going for years. His career batting average had slipped from 32 after 50 matches to 23 after 76.
Mulder was the boy wonder, he used to go from high school lessons to the Lions change room. At 18 he was seen as the next Jacques Kallis. That was enough for South Africa to rush his debut. Mulder played his first ODI at 19 and played 10 ODI innings spread between October 2017 and September 2021.
Mulder’s run overlapped with Phehlukwayo’s. Which explains the stop-start stop-start nature of his ODI career. There were also a few injuries that slowed down his development. The jury is still out on whether Phehlukwayo or Mulder can replace Pollock at seven.
Moneyball wisdom suggests that if you can’t find a like-for-like replacement for a valuable player, you identify the pieces of that player you can least afford to be without and recreate an aggregate of them. That's what Billy Beane did when the Auckland A's traded Jason Giambi. They used at least three players to cover the hole Giambi had left.
The Proteas did not plan it that way, but that’s how things turned out. They abandoned the idea of trying to score runs at number seven. They decided to just pick five bowlers. Around that time, Rassie van der Dussen cemented his place in the ODI side. Without knowing it, South Africa Moneyballed their Pollock replacement in van der Dussen and whichever bowler came out to bat at number seven.
When he was 23, van der Dussen earned himself the nickname MaThousand. The North West coaches and management incentivized run-scoring by offering a R1000 bonus for every century scored. Van der Dussen piled on runs, scored a few tons and earned a few bonuses. He just didn’t score a bucketload of runs, he was also difficult to dismiss. Van der Dussen brought that trait to the Proteas.
Van der Dussen became the Proteas’ Moneyball solution for the Pollock position. He stays in for long enough to do the number seven job with the bat and South Africa picks five bowlers. His average of 38.43 in the last 10 overs has come at a strike rate of 140.84. Not even Pollock could manage this. There is a downside to this solution, though. When van der Dussen is out of form, the Proteas lose two batters.
Marco Jansen is the new candidate for the Pollock position. He is the 29th player to have a go at filling the hole left by Pollock's retirement. When you reduce it to numbers, Jansen is the 29th player to be tried at number seven in 15 years, that’s an average of almost two players being tried out in the spot each year. 1.93 players a year. That is a high turnover. No one is settling in.
So far, Jansen’s presence at seven has already made a difference. Before he took up the number seven position, between 2019 and 2022, South Africa’s number sevens averaged 15.50 at a strike rate of 107.51. With Jansen at seven, South Africa’s runs at number seven have gone up by 5.2 runs an innings.
This bump couldn’t have come at a better time. South Africa needs the number seven runs more than ever. South Africa’s tail has not been contributing much with the bat. They have averaged 12.6 runs since 2020.
Whether or not Jansen is a long-term solution, time will tell. For now, he is doing a job.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time… - CS