Rassie van der Dussen’s 140-ball 17 was a labour of more than three hours. But its end was another episode of the mental flatulence that cost South Africa the match.
TELFORD VICE at Newlands
FOR the first 93 minutes of play at Newlands on Tuesday, the improbable seemed distantly possible. For a while, something brewed in the quiet place in South Africans’ minds where they go when they want to imagine a reality different from the obvious. For many of them, thoughts of Adelaide in November 2012 were prominent.
Then, Faf du Plessis batted for more than a day on debut to score a century, save the match, write his own script as a man for the trenches, and start his journey towards the Test captaincy. On Tuesday, after 93 minutes, or 27 minutes before lunch, he played the stroke of a dolt — the kind of shot he refused to downgrade to against the Australians more than seven years ago — and the bubble burst. A slapped sweep off Dom Bess flew past short leg but not past square leg, where Joe Denly couldn’t help but take the catch.
Dean Elgar has a phrase for this sort of thing: a brain fart. The shock of what Du Plessis had done rippled electrically around the ground. In came someone the scoreboard introduced as “Hendrick van der Duss”, who can bat a bit, and at least Pieter Malan was still there, the South Africans in the crowd would have thought …
In the seventh over with the second new ball, which was taken when due by — surprisingly — Sam Curran, Malan misread the line of a Curran delivery the left-armer angled across him and Ben Stokes took a low catch at second slip. It was the 288th ball Malan had faced in a stay of more than six hours for his 84, and it was a decent nut. The debutant done good: he had to be got out.
Van der Dussen and Quinton de Kock took South Africa to tea with no further drama, and it was a sign of England’s rising anxiety to take the five remaining wickets that they set bristling fields — all available men, or all but one, in catching positions — in the final session. That paid off in the sixth over after tea, when De Kock, having compiled an exemplary half-century, lunged at a long hop from Denly and smashed it to short midwicket, where Zak Crawley leapt to hold a fine catch. It was another episode of mental flatulence, and it earned Denly — a country house level leg spinner who hadn’t taken a wicket from the 240 deliveries he had bowled going into this match — his second of the innings.
A moment after James Anderson was moved to leg gully, Van der Dussen blipped him a catch off Stuart Broad. Van der Dussen’s 140-ball 17, a labour of more than three hours, was an admirable effort. But its end was another brain fart.
At 237/7, England had taken such firm control of the match that Joe Root felt at home enough to gee up the Barmy Army from his position in the slip cordon. For the significantly fewer South Africa supporters, that was a sickening sight.
After Stokes removed Dwaine Pretorius and Anrich Nortjé with consecutive deliveries to take England within a wicket of victory, Kagiso Rabada and Vernon Philander — who had become embroiled in a verbal confrontation with Jos Buttler — couldn’t quite decide whether to take a run when Rabada punched the hattrick ball down the ground.
They recovered the sensibilities in time not to suffer the calamity of a runout, but the snapshot was a look into the heads of a team who didn’t seem sure of much anymore. Twenty-four balls later, with 50 deliveries left in the match, Philander failed to deal with a rising effort from Stokes and speared a catch to Ollie Pope in the cordon. Philander didn’t seem to believe what had happened, and stood for a long moment, apparently waiting for his fate to be undone. You could hardly blame the man: South Africa had lost half their wickets for 11 runs when all they had to do to secure a draw was bat out a session. That didn’t smell at all good.
Ten days ago at Centurion, South Africa defied everything that has befallen the game in their country by beating England. They made the improbable not only possible but real, and hopes skyrocketed that after months of darkness the sun had at last come out. It was blazing again at Newlands on Tuesday, but it shone on England. Sometimes even the brightest dawns are false.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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