Steulen said:
Which proves my point. Gibbs currently sucks, SA currently sucks. He is the most influential player in the team.
He's not the only one, though:
Rudolph's last 8 ODIs: 165 runs at 23.57
Van Jaarsveld's last 8 ODIs: 69 runs at 17.25
Smith's last 31 ODIs (excluding Bangladesh games): 977 runs at 32.56, just 7 single-figure scores, but just 8 half-centuries, too
Andre Nel's last 6 ODIs: 3 wickets at 102.66, ER 6.39-an-over
Allan Dawson's last 8 ODIs: 3 wickets at 103.66, ER 5.55-an-over
Makhaya Ntini's last 14 ODIs: 18 wickets at 32.84, 5.44-an-over
Mark Boucher's last 29 ODIs: 350 runs at 19.44
Klusener and Kallis' bowling hasn't been great at all recently, nor has Klusener's batting been quite the devestating force it was 2 or 3 years ago.
One of the few who has improved his ODI performances since WC2003 has been Shaun Pollock (his economy-rate has been 3.64-an-over, compared to his career of 3.74). Jacques Kallis the batsman is almost completely absolved of blame (since WC2003 he's scored 1302 runs at 65.10).
But you can see quite clearly why the team has gone downhill so dramatically. Other obvious reasons are the loss of players such as Kirsten, Rhodes, Elworthy and Donald. Added to the sometimes baffling selections of the like of Albie Morkel, Monde Zondeki, Robin Peterson, Andrew Hall (as principally a bowler), and the decisions to ignore the like of McKenzie, Dippenaar, van Wyk, Langeveldt, Willoughby, Terbrugge and Telemachus. Most baffling of all was bringing in a batsman with a List-A average of 64 and batting him at eight.
