Arthur: Attack Has Prevailed

SOUTH AFRICA NEWS

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Arthur - selection dilemma.

By Myles Hodgson, PA Sport Cricket Correspondent, St Lucia

South African coach Mickey Arthur believes the remaining four teams in the World Cup have been rewarded for playing an attacking brand of cricket not matched by other sides.

Arthur's side come face to face with the daunting strength of Australia in Wednesday's semi-final and kept a close eye on the first showdown between New Zealand and Sri Lanka.

All four teams in the semi-finals have looked to maximise scoring opportunities during the early powerplays and Arthur, a keen student of world cricket trends, believes their further progress in the tournament is their reward for their adventurous style.

"There is no doubt in my mind that Australia and South Africa are playing a great brand of cricket," said Arthur, who has helped South Africa become the highest-ranked one-day side in the world during his two years in charge.

"When I took over, Graeme Smith and I looked at ways of how we could improve and how we could lead in one-day cricket.

"It is a power-based game now that is all about taking risks. It's all about playing brain cricket, having the confidence to hit balls over the top and having the confidence to take sweepers on."

Arthur revealed how he formulated a plan with Smith to become more aggressive, which was underlined during last Tuesday's crushing nine-wicket victory over England when they raced to victory in only 19.2 overs of their reply.

"That was something we identified two years ago," he admitted. "We thought that in order for us to become the force we wanted to be, we needed to change the brand of cricket we were playing.

"I do think some of the teams in the sub-continent and England are playing a far too conservative brand at the moment. We have done it, Australia have done it and I don't think it's any coincidence that the four teams who do this have all reached the semi-finals."

Of course that policy does not always work and they slumped to an 83-run defeat against Australia during the group stages in St Kitts which has prompted Arthur to study the tapes in an attempt to try to find a winning formula this time.

He said: "We've done a lot of thinking and analysed that game quite a lot. We've discussed St Kitts at length and looked at how Australia played and we've picked up some trends that (Ricky) Ponting used during the game.

"We've spent a lot of time doing out homework on it. Our last six encounters are at 3-3 now and that's the way we're approaching it.

"It's very easy to build a huge game like this up and to hype it up so much that the players over-hyped and over-anxious. We're trying to play it down as much as we can and just keep the guys on a good level."

Captain Smith has recovered from a left-knee injury he sustained in training earlier this week and will lead the side out after successfully coming through net practice over the last two days.

South Africa's main dilemma is whether to break up the side who stormed past England into the semi-finals with Arthur admitting: "It's going to be pretty difficult to change that team.

"The guys were fantastic, they were up for it and we got a really good vibe with them."

Spinner Robin Peterson may come into the reckoning because of the slower surface at the Beausejour Stadium, but seamer Makhaya Ntini may have to wait for his chance after being dropped for the match against England.