Gibbs emerges triumphant in triangular game

South African opening batsman Herschelle Gibbs, until recently the bad boy of the national squad, showed he is back in form when he led the team to victory over Kenya.

After their humiliating defeat by India on Friday, when they notched up only 90 runs all out, the Kenyans put on a better show here, setting South Africa a target of 229 in the triangular one-day series.

But while the Kenyans obviously paid attention to their batting after being routed by India, they did not seem to get their bowling act together as Gibbs reached 70 off 60 balls.

Boeta Dippenaar's 74 off 118 balls and Lance Klusener's 75 off 79 balls saw the South Africans to victory with the loss of just a single wicket.

Gibbs, who was frequently in trouble during the last season, was named man of the match and also received a Blue Bean batting award for scoring more runs than the number of balls he faced.

Last year, Gibbs was one of the players implicated in the match-fixing scandal that led to the downfall of his former captain, Hansie Cronje. But While Cronje got a life ban from the game, Gibbs received a six-month suspension and was back in action by January this year.

Then he was in trouble again for joining team-mates who smoked marijuana in a hotel room during the West Indian tour. Gibbs was in the last three days of a suspended sentence for an earlier misdemeanour at the time.

After returning from the West Indies, Gibbs faced a disciplinary hearing and the United Cricket Board of South Africa sent him for a life skills training course. Gibbs recently said he had benefited greatly by this and his team-mates and friends say he is a much better person as well.

"It was a very nice batting pitch," Gibbs said after receiving his awards. "The ball came on nicely throughout the innings. My job is to get on with things in the first 15 overs and I tried to do it."

With the absence of his normal opening partner, Gary Kirsten, due to a right thigh strain, Gibbs was paired with Dippenaar. He was a little cautious about how the less experienced Dippenaar had performed.

"He (Dippenaar) can be attacking if he wants to be. He might have slowed up towards the end of his innings but that's the way it goes. The momentum is there and if both guns are firing, it makes for interesting cricket," Gibbs said.

Gibbs said he had not worked particularly hard at any one aspect of his game to achieve his improved performance this year. "Perhaps only my balance. I worked hard at it in the West Indies as well, and since then I've played a lot straighter, timing the ball a lot better. Generally I'm feeling quite good at the moment," he said.

Kenyan captain Maurice Odumbe said his side had improved a lot on their batting. "But our bowlers did let us down and we will work on it before the next game. We came out here with a positive attitude because we had nothing to lose. It can't get any worse than it is. It is a plus for us that at least we did manage to post more than 200 runs and maybe we should try to capitalise on that in future matches," he said.

"Our medium pacers did not do a good job the way we expected them to do in the first 15 overs. Of course Herschelle Gibbs was in tremendous form and it was not easy to contain him," Odumbe said.

South African captain Shaun Pollock said his team was happy about the win after losing to India earlier in the week.

"There's always talk about trying to rotate team members and giving guys a chance, but at the end of the day you also have to give the bottom order a chance to get a bit of a hit and time in the middle," Pollock said about the change in order in his team.

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--Indo-Asian News Service

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