DNA testing could have helped the Proteas.. So why does it get ignored when the rest of the world embraces the DNA revolution!
As a proudly South African cricket supporter, the performance of the Proteas at the 2019 Cricket World Cup in England disappointed me. My National Team have the opportunity to lead the world by embracing the latest innovations and disruptions in the world of technology and science, but their failure to do so certainly is a likely contributor to the recent impact to their performance noted at this years world cup.
I understand why so many of my fellow South African’s back home might feel pessimistic and dejected by this, after all we are passionate about cricket and when we don’t win, it feels as if we mourn as a nation. In years passed, the heartache of the Cricket World Cup has often left us feeling hollow, but that has almost always been down what seems to be a collision with the wrong side of lady luck, or perhaps a critical lapse in judgement in a brief but defining moment. It’s always felt like a small gap between us and World Cup cricketing glory, so much so that you couldn’t help but think that eventual glory was inevitable. This year it seems that we were a long way off from start to finish.
So, what went wrong for the Proteas?
At the end of any failed world cup campaign opinions are easy to find as a quick single to Amla at short fine leg. At these times it’s often hard to separate good advice from bad, so let’s start with listing the facts. Fitness in the Proteas camp put us on the back foot from the beginning, and kept us there right through the tournament. I’ll expand on this in a minute. Secondly, despite us once again offering all the right rhetoric, prior to take off, at each sign of pressure our Proteas wilted under the heat. As somebody who is passionate about genetics and the new insights which this science is allowing us to understand, I feel strongly that these factors should no longer be dismissed as being beyond our control.
Control is an interesting word, and one which is used frequently in cricketing jargon. Faf, and many other captains, promise us time and time again that they will “control the controllables” prior to taking the field. With the age of genetics having well and truly arrived, why are these controllables limited to playing “in the V,” holding catches or bowling good lines and lengths? While freak or unexpected injuries can always occur, why should managing our controllables not extend to giving ourselves the best possible opportunity of arriving with a World Cup squad which is injury free and bursting with big match temperament? Imagine that.
Over the last two decades, sport, and cricket specifically, have been on a steady decline in South Africa. This gradual deterioration can be linked to many factors which are a lot harder to control for our heroes on the field. Domestic players are often tempted to work in foreign teams as our prime players are targets to foreign franchises enriched from an influx of new T20 money. Who can really blame father to a young family, Duanne Olivier (or others) for choosing a different path when Yorkshire (a UK county) calls with a deal reported to be worth three times what he would have earned as a national player operating, almost certainly for the short to medium term, on the fringes of the SA squad?
The team should seriously focus on genetics! It’s so much deeper than this which I am confident that South Africa is behind the global sporting curve on.
It’s not surprising that our previous Head of Sports Science was poached by Australia Performance Pathways!
Genetic predisposition to injury
Rabada was injured at the IPL. Dale Steyn’s shoulder injury got a lot of media attention as people questioned why he was even selected in the first place. Lungi Ngidi suffered a hamstring strain while still recovering from a side strain. Anrich Nortje strained his shoulder before the tournament. Rassie van der Dussen strained his groin while fielding in the loss they suffered to India during the tournament. The South African cricket team have been ravaged by injury.
This is no surprise as leading teams we have worked with are already using the power of genetics to prevent injury and assist recover, and specifically the Indian Cricket team.
This is the one that we can talk about as it’s in the public domain, but many others doing very well in this years World Cup are using genetics to capture the advantage that is provided by the latest acceleration in genetic research and technology. This is a concern for me, because as a proud South African, our home teams should embrace, seek it out and be hungry to apply it and catch up to the rest of the worlds teams.
The vital question to ask is, “just how do we go about reviving South African cricket at this juncture?” Jaques Kallis in his ICC column wrote, “Some will demand everything is changed but a total clean out is just not the way ahead, we need to be more considerate and thoughtful… In my career I always improved after a setback, that’s sport. It’s human nature to want to learn when things don’t go according to plan.”
I agree with Kallis that a more considered and thoughtful approach is the way forward.
This is exactly what I suggested when I met the coach at a recent event but sadly the technology has not yet been embraced!
So, consider this: there is nothing more harmful to training and performance success than injury. The truth is genes actually do play a role in injury risk. With this information, particular paths can be ventured down where a players risk of being injured is reduced. Having a DNA test for fitness involves finding out a players predisposition to injury, common sports injuries as well as training modifications that can be made, all for the purpose of finding a proactive way to prevent future injuries. But, injury risk isn’t the only factor to consider. How fast you recover after training sessions is also an important part of achieving results.
There are also genes associated with recovery speed–and a large amount of investigative information on oxidative stress and inflammation, which both aid in recovery. If an individual’s recovery is not monitored and maintained for optimal benefits, it can hamper players from reaching their goals. The fitness report DNAfit provides can aid in creating training programmes for individual members to make sure every player has the right amount of training, correct volume and appropriate intensity. It becomes a useful tool to focus their individual efforts on key sessions to make the links of the team chain stronger.
Knowing a player’s predisposed injury risk and recovery rate can protect against them from injury. So, if how fast a player recovers and how they proactively reduce their injury risk is an important part of achieving results, the next natural step is actioning clear steps so that successful results manifest from the ground up.
Genetic stress response: warrior vs. strategist
Cricket South Africa CEO Thabang Moroe said “…the Proteas need to find a better way moving forward to deal with pressure. Moroe believes the Proteas World Cup campaign was tough because it is a mental game….”
If the team searched for solutions they would find them.
I found his comment most interesting because something we deal with as a core part of our DNA testing is a Stress Report, which provides insight as to an individual’s predisposition towards stress tolerance. Based on your Stress ‘score’ we are able to provide guidelines and interventions for managing stress better — it’s important to note that I am not advocating in any way, the use of this science as an inclusion or exclusion criteria for any sporting team, in fact I believe firmly that genetics should never be used for that purpose given the vast and varying factors, genetic and environmental, which make up an elite sportsperson. I am saying though, let’s take our best players and give them every tool available to allow them to manage high pressured situations through actionable genetic insights. If that allows the twenty-two or so men who will board the plane to India for World Cup 2023 to be even 10% better prepared for the cauldron of expectation and scrutiny that lies before them then surely we are starting to meet Mr Moroe’s wish of “finding a better way moving forward to deal with the pressure.”
Optimising performance can be achieved. With advances in science over the last few years, genetics may now hold the key to finding a new way forward in enhancing player performance — from training and injury prevention to a sincere and pioneering approach to supporting the mental aspects of tournament cricket which make it so different to any other format of the game. We now have new tools to hand which can help in forging a path which finally leaves our World Cup cricketing heartache behind us, so let’s use them and get back in the game!
