Have we seen Herschelle Gibbs in the international arena for the last time?

Profiles / Andrew Hughes / 03 July 2008 / Leave a Comment

From the dizzy heights of being the flamboyant half of opening partnerships with Kirsten and Smith and hitting six sixes in an over to the lows of being caught up in match-fixing, struggling for runs and off-field indiscipline, Herschelle Gibbs' career has certainly been a colourful one. Andrew Hughes tells us all about it....

Herschelle Gibbs arrived in soggy South Wales last month to spearhead Glamorgan's tilt at the Twenty20 Cup. They fell just short of the quarter finals, but Gibbs enjoyed himself immensely, plundering nearly three hundred runs at an average of fifty-six. He will hope this fling in the principality will have earned him some much-needed credit with the South African selectors. Because having been dropped from the Test team not once but twice this year, his international future is hanging by a thread.

That might seem crazy. After all, it was only last spring that he lashed six sixes in one over and finished his country's second top scorer in the World Cup. But as Shaun Pollock discovered, selectors in that part of the world are not slow to punish those older players whose standards appear to have dropped. And Gibbs has given them plenty of ammunition. Whether it is just a prolonged bout of lost confidence, or the first signs that age is eroding those lightning reflexes, his form over the last twelve months has been abysmal and he hasn't scored a Test century since 2005.

In a weaker team, he might be permitted to drop down a position or two to rediscover his form. But South Africa are not a weak team and they do not currently have any middle order vacancies. Indeed, such is their strength that they go into the forthcoming series with England as [2.18] favourites to regain the Basil d'Oliveira Trophy with the hosts easy to back at [3.0]

So if it really is all over for Gibbs, how should we judge his career? How good a batsman has he been and has he fulfilled his potential? At one point, in 2004, his average was pushing fifty and he was on the verge of becoming one of his country's greats. His place in the pantheon of South African cricket is a slightly lower one now, ranking around twelve in the all time lists, behind Jacques Kallis and Graeme Smith.

Could he have done better? Perhaps, but probably not much better. His technique was simple, relying entirely on timing and fast hands. There have been many such batsmen in Test cricket and most of them ended up with lower averages. What is particularly remarkable is that a man with such a technique, which often meant he was not in line and so vulnerable to the moving ball, should have thrived as a Test opener for so long. For nearly a decade, he was the flamboyant half of South Africa's opening partnerships, first with Gary Kirsten and then Graeme Smith. He is blessed with an ability to play the extraordinary and unorthodox shot, a fluent and aesthetically pleasing strokemaker who hits the ball tremendously hard.

It was Duncan Fletcher who recognised that the key to this natural talent was confidence and an uncluttered mind. As his coach at Western Province, Fletcher encouraged him to play with freedom. Moving up to open the batting seemed to help with that, perhaps because opening batsmen have no match situations to worry about, they start each innings with a blank slate.

Unfortunately, too often his mind was also a blank slate. Repeated brushes with authority have been a feature of his career. Hanse Cronje's attempt to corrupt him was seen as a metaphor for the inferior position of non-whites in South African society. But if it wasn't greed, it was at the very least reckless stupidity to accept Cronje's offer of US$15,000 to score less than twenty in that fateful Nagpur match, an act as characteristic of his personality as the fact that he subsequently forgot all about the arrangement and went on to score seventy-four.

From his ill discipline on an Under 19 tour, right through to his recent bout of bad behaviour in a domestic game, there has been a consistent pattern of self-inflicted career damage. In the end, these things sap the patience of fans and selectors alike. Even now, he is out on bail following his arrest for drink driving in March. The case will be heard on October 3rd, by which time, the international career of this exhilarating but flawed character could be over.