SA View: Is Graeme Smith the next cricketer on the Australian team’s hit list?

MICHAEL Clarke’s team has directly contributed to the retirement of Graeme Swann and the axing of KP. Is Graeme Smith next on their hit list?

South African captain Graeme Smith

MICHAEL Clarke’s merciless Test team has directly contributed to the retirement of Graeme Swann, the axing of Kevin Pietersen and the redeployment of Andy Flower in recent months.

Could Graeme Smith be next on their hit list?

Smith’s international future was openly discussed by the South African media after the veteran opener was once again dismissed cheaply by Australia’s fast bowlers during the first day’s play in Port Elizabeth.

Speculation has mounted that Smith was poised to quit international cricket twice in the last four months — the first instance due to a selection dispute, the second over his move to take up Irish citizenship — although the Proteas skipper has previously insisted he would like to play through to the 2015 World Cup.

But after another modest outing against the Australians — he has been dismissed for 10, 4 and 9 this series — juxtaposed with Dean Elgar’s fighting 83 at the top of the order, some are questioning how long Smith has left in the game.

Graeme Smith walks off after been dismissed for 9 runs during the second Test match between South Africa and Australia at St George's Park.

ROB Houwing, writing on the Sport24 website, noted that “with Smith no spring chicken and having fought so many fatiguing, momentous battles in his heyday, Elgar may reasonably soon have a clearer ticket to a Test opener’s berth.”

“The national captain is 33, has started a family and may just wish to step off the international treadmill a bit sooner than some people think,” Houwing wrote. “So it was arguably a symbolic development … that a tenacious character around seven years his junior — and also with the cricketing abbreviation ‘LHB’ alongside his name on his profile — showed what he is made of, at last in his preferred role of opener.

“It was the first time now eight-cap Dean Elgar had partnered the gnarly stalwart Smith upfront for the Proteas, and on the day the relative rookie was notably more successful, spearheading a slightly fragile South Africa’s measured progress.”

South Africa's batsman Dean Elgar, left, shakes hand with teammate Faf du Plessis, right, after reaching his half century.

Honours were largely even at stumps on day one as the South Africans ground their way to 5-214, thanks largely to the efforts of the 26-year-old Elgar. But the South African media appeared to be claiming the upper hand for one reason — their first Test nemesis, Mitchell Johnson, was restricted to a solitary wicket.

THE Johannesburg Star somewhat optimistically published a five-step guide on how to nullify the express pace, deft swing and short-pitched aggression of Johnson. They might’ve considered limiting the list to four.

“He seems to have the powers of Samson with that tuft of hair on his upper lip,” Zaahier Adams wrote in his fifth-and-final point. “It was supposed to be for “Movember”, and his wife made him remove that horrible-looking thing after the Ashes. But such was the success he had with it on, he grew it back for the South African tour on the advice of his teammates. The Proteas need to find someone to force Johnson to go to a barber.”

Uh huh.

Australia's bowler Mitchell ‘Mo’ Johnson.

THE Mail and Guardian, meanwhile, offered up an arguably more radical proposal to throw Johnson off his game: sledge him.

“If the Proteas top order can’t handle 150+ km/h bouncers, could desperation lead them to trying a different tactic?” Neil Manthorp asked. “Johnson admits he is a bad sledger and has been thrown off his game by verbal encounters against England in the past.

“Could that be South Africa’s answer in Port Elizabeth? Engage in a sledging war? It would represent an appalling risk.

“Johnson, it appears, is not only an “uncontrollable” when in prime form, but also a bowler in control of his own emotions.

“Skill and instinct were all the Proteas could rely on when the second Test began in Port Elizabeth on Thursday.”

MIKE Haysman, meanwhile, opined that Australia’s pace attack “was not collectively devastating” without Johnson. Writing on the SuperSport website, Haysman intimated that the Proteas deserved the mantle of the world’s best pace attack.

“Do Australia have the best bowling attack in the world? No,” Haysman wrote. “What they do have at the moment is the most lethal quick who is riding the crest of a brutality wave magnificently.

“Take Mitchell Johnson out of that attack and replace him with anyone else from the stable of Australia’s speedsters and suddenly they are a pace attack that resembles far better than standard fare, but they are not collectively devastating. Johnson is lethal and Johnson is the difference.”