SA cricket's five flops in 2017

So much of what is published on sport celebrates achievement, but there’s much more than that to the games people play.

For every winner there has to be a loser, for every champion someone who came, saw and was conquered.

These five South African cricketers ended up on the wrong side of that equation too often for their own good in 2017.

1. Wayne Parnell

Imagine knowing you have more talent than other players — and then seeing them make more of their relatively modest gifts than you are able to of your impressive ability, try as you might to put potential into practice. 

Welcome to Wayne’s world.

In October he played the last of his 111 matches for South Africa. By December he had been dropped by the Cobras and was on loan to the Warriors.

With a T20 economy rate of 11.10 and an average of 87.00 this season, it’s not hard to see why.

2. Stephen Cook

You won’t find a more polite, good-natured, articulate person anywhere in all of sport than Cook.

But he also made for one of the saddest sights in sport when, having been dropped for the third test against New Zealand in Hamilton in March, he was reduced to skivvy duties and crossed the boundary wearing a substitute’s bib.

Having scored 17 runs in four innings, he could hardly complain about his axing. He didn’t, of course.

3. JP Duminy

If “You beauty! You superstar!” seems so long ago, that’s because it is — Mark Nicholas’ visceral verdict on Duminy reaching his maiden test century roared around the world from Melbourne all of nine years ago.

But instead of launching a stellar career Duminy’s innings was the epitome of peaking too early.

That 166 was his third test innings and in his next 70 he scored only five centuries.

Happily, after reaching 50 just once in his 10 completed test innings this year — and having been dropped for the second test against England in Nottingham in July — he had the good sense to hang up his whites.

4. Quinton de Kock

The problem with soaring so high so quickly is that people expect you to keep going straight past the sun.

As Icarus would tell you, that ain’t gonna happen.

Nonetheless, there is alarm that as massive a player as De Kock, who has scored 16 centuries in five years as an international, could manage only 118 runs — 78 of them in two innings — in his eight knocks in the franchise T20 competition.

5. Dwaine Pretorius

Pretorius is too good a player to be at the bottom of the bowlers’ barrel in South Africa this year.

But that’s just where he is after eight games in the format in which he has taken 1/175 to record the worst average of all the 171 bowlers who have turned their arm over in all senior cricket above club level in this country in 2017.

The news is only slightly less gloomy with the bat for the Lions allrounder: 58 runs in five innings with a highest score of 20.

Can do better.