By Peter Robinson Johannesburg Normal service having been resumed by Shaun Pollock's South Africans in the Caribbean, this might be as good a point as any to consider the vexed question of rotation. By way of explanation, rotation is the selection policy employed by Manchester United football club and the Australian one-day cricket team. As a guiding principle it overturns one of sport's most venerable maxims. Whenever possible, insists rotation, change a winning team. Not just on a whim, mind you, but with a greater prize than the next result as the eventual goal.
Rotation accepts fluctuations in form, physical and mental.
Indeed, it's partly predicated on the belief that as sports calendars grow ever crowded, not everyone's going to be on top of his or her game all the time. Super 12 rugby has reinforced this point to South African teams where it is now widely accepted that success is built on strength in depth. Cricket, however, particularly South African cricket, still seems to need a little persuading. Despite the evidence to the contrary, the wider South African public tends to regard each and every one-day international as a contest in and of itself to be won at all costs. In turn this pushes on to the selectors and eventually on to the team itself.