Alastair Hignell: Springboks kicking game is catching on

You've got to hand it to the Boks. Even though there's every chance they'll kick it back.

Last weekend's narrow victory over New Zealand in Hamilton capped a wonderful few months for the world champions in which they had not only notched up three victories in a row against the All Blacks, but also beaten Australia home and away and won a series against the British and Irish Lions.

Theirs is a team of all the talents.

In Victor Matfield and Bakkies Botha South Africa have probably the best two individual lock forwards in the world and without a shadow of a doubt the best combination.

In Bismarck du Plessis they have a hooker so good that he has ousted the man who led the Boks to World Cup victory in that position and in John Smit, adapting almost effortlessly to tighthead prop in order to accommodate du Plessis, they have a quite extraordinary leader of men.

In blindside flanker Juan Smith, full-back Frans Steyn and centres Jacques Fourie and Jean de Villiers, they have men who are not only uncompromisingly powerful but also aggressively athletic.

In Heinrich Brussow and Morne Steyn, who started the season as not even first-choice understudies to World Cup lynchpins Schalk Burger and Butch James, they have players able to step in and play as well as the legends they replaced.

In scrum-half Fourie du Preez, they have the best tactician in the world, at the peak of his powers and seemingly taking all before him.

And then, both in positions where it was expected – wings Bryan Habana and JP Pietersen – and positions where it was not – loosehead prop Tendai Mtawarira and number eight Pierre Spies – they have pace to burn.

And yet, rarely, if ever did they emerge from the tactical strait-jacket imposed on them during the World Cup by Jake White, who at least had the excuse that in a knockout tournament the end is so much more important than the means.

His successor, Pieter de Villiers may have talked about adopting a more expansive and satisfying style of play but soon piped down when his players demonstrated their reluctance to change a winning formula.

So the speed of Habana and Pietersen was employed almost exclusively in pursuit of up and unders delivered with relentless precision and endless repetition by Fourie and Steyn.

The pace of Pierre Spies was used only on the breakout after turnover ball had been engineered by the bone-shattering tackling of a de Villiers, a Fourie or a Smith and the ruthless pilfering of a Burger or a Brussow. The pace of Mtawarira was hardly seen at all.

New Zealand coach Graham Henry was probably the wrong man to air the opinion, but, sour grapes aside, he had a point when he accused South Africa of ruining the game as a spectacle.

The way the Springboks play has turned a handling game into a game of kick and chase, where more position is infinitely more important than possession. They've proved that at times it's better not to have the ball at all. Rather than run the risk of making a mistake when it's in your possession why not, they appear to argue, hoof it up in the air and pressurise the opposition into error?

Early signs from the Guinness Premiership suggest that coaches on this side of the world have come to the same conclusion.

Sky pundit Stuart Barnes used his Times column to highlight the extraordinary statistic that in the opening round of matches the ball was belted up in the air on average 57 times in each match, or once every 85 seconds that the ball was in play. He blamed both the new laws – reducing still further the areas in the field from which a player could kick to touch and increasing the chances of a turnover in the tackle area – and risk-averse coaches.

His proposed solution was to limit the number of times a team could kick the ball in open play.

By imposing a limit – his first thought was 20 kicks per team – he argued that while the importance of good tactical kicking would be enhanced, aimless kicking would be discouraged and positive rugby would return.

And while his argument has a lot going for it, it also, to my mind has one major flaw.

Who's going to do the counting, and how reliable is it likely to be?

Cricket umpires frequently fail to count correctly as far as six. What chance have rugby refs got of getting to 20?