The South African Cricket team has displayed outstanding performances against the Bangladesh tourists over the past 5 weeks under new head coach Gibson’s next assignment is a four-day test match against Zimbabwe at home before India and Australia tour South Africa. He also announced that he will be altering his support staff in the coming weeks and has already appointed himself as the fast bowling coach.
Whitewashing the tourists across all formats of the game, saw the Proteas dominate tests, all three one-day internationals and both T20s. Gibson shook things up by bringing in some fresh youngsters, and they yielded excellent results thus emphasising the depth in South African cricket. It was Gibson’s first stint at the reins with the team and he says that he is pleased with the team’s performance.
“I think it’s gone really well when you come in as a new coach it couldn’t have gone much better played a lot of good cricket .I think we’ve been able to play a dominating brand of cricket; front-foot cricket ,” said Gibson.
He is however concerned that some of his key players are still out of action with injuries. “I think there are sort of four or five keys players that are missing is still a concern so perhaps fitness is something well have to look at going forward and trying keep people fit it’s not easy when you have that many injured players quality players as well players that most likely will be in the team, therefor that’s something that we have to look at and see how we can make that side of things better.”
Gibson kept the support staff that served under Russel Domingo for his first haul in charge but has made it clear that changes are coming. Gibson did not confirm who is on his list for support-staff positions but he did confirm that he will take over the bowling coach role from Charl Langeveldt He will appoint four other support personnel ; an assistant coach, a batting coach, a fielding coach and a spin-bowling coach.
“There is quite likely to be new faces I’m going to do the fast bowling myself .I can say that already because I’ve spoken to Charl, I’ve spoken to CSA they’re aware of that and there quite likely to be a few other new faces I’ve given CSA my sort of wish list if you like people that I think will come in and add value and over the past five weeks I’ve been I’ve been talking to various different people around the country to get opinions on other coaches.”
Gibson wants lots of time with his team before India and Australia tour South Africa at the beginning of 2018. He believes that having his best team available for these games could yield promising results.
“Yeah for sure the test ranking is probably more important that the ODI ranking especially given the fact that over the next 3 or 4 months were playing both of the top two teams here in our back yard there’s a real feeling that if we can get our best team on the field then we have a real opportunity to beat those two teams.”
