Temba Bavuma hit a pull-scoop for six as casually as if he was slinging a jacket over his shoulder on his way out the door after a hard day’s work.
TELFORD VICE at Newlands
QUINTON de Kock suggested what sort of captain he might make when Eoin Morgan called incorrectly at Newlands on Tuesday. That marked the first time a South Africa captain had won the toss in eight games, or since the World Cup. For the first time in a while that has included six losses in seven Tests, things were looking up.
But it takes more than luck to captain a cricket team. It takes knowledge. So, what do you do if 75.76% of the teams who have batted second in the 33 previous day/night ODIs at this ground have lost? You bat first.
We’ll have a bowl, De Kock said. And when England made 258/8 it looked as if he had got it wrong. Modest though that was, it was also the biggest score successfully chased under lights at Newlands. At least, it was until it became obvious that South Africa would reel in the target without having to roll up their sleeves. They were winners with seven wickets standing and 16 balls to spare.
Perhaps De Kock had been a step ahead of history, and the rest of us, all along. Those records were set when day/nighters started 90 minutes later than Tuesday’s game. When the sun set at 7.49pm (local time), South Africa had all of 11.3 overs left in which to score 48 more runs. Conditions were thus significantly more even throughout the match than in the past.
De Kock was central his team’s scintillating performance, hitting harder and handsomer than even he tends to do and scoring 107, his 15th ODI century and his first in 11 completed innings. He shared 173 off 170 balls with Temba Bavuma, who was a revelation for his 98.
Bavuma played a pull-scoop off Chris Woakes as casually as if he was slinging a jacket over his shoulder on his way out the door after a hard day’s work. But there was nothing casual about the emphatic six that resulted.
The De Kock-Bavuma stand was South Africa’s biggest for the second wicket in ODIs against England. Only two partnerships for any wicket in any match in the format at this ground have been higher. Few stands anywhere could have been blessed with running as slick as this. The pair scampered 96 of their runs, or more than half, hammered the rest with gusto, and were rarely not on the attack.
And they prompted questions. On the strength, or rather the weakness, of England’s bowling shouldn’t the ICC revisit the fateful boundary count in last year’s World Cup final and investigate what it would cost, in money and embarrassment, to have to belatedly ship the trophy to New Zealand? No: Woakes was the only survivor from England’s attack that day at Lord’s. For that matter, England’s only other common factor was the top four of Jason Roy, Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root and Morgan.
So let South Africans not get too excited about one small step towards better days. There are two more games in this series, then three T20s, then engagements against Australia, India, West Indies and, perhaps, Pakistan. And then there’s a T20 World Cup. Based on recent factual events, a lot could yet go wrong for them.
Another question, this one more serious: what kind of batter might captaincy make of De Kock? It is an odd thing to ask about someone 117 innings into an already glittering ODI career. But the context is that De Kock has taken every opportunity he has had since being named captain to sum up his elevation in one word: responsibility. As in the taking thereof. That’s what he did on Tuesday. So much so that when he reached his century, in the 34th over with a silky off-drive for four off debuting leg spinner Matt Parkinson, he removed his helmet slowly and deliberately to return the crowd’s salute. Then he raised his bat almost gingerly, as if calling for a replacement. It wasn’t so much a celebration as the marking of a milestone on a road a long way from fully travelled.
There were several good signs for South Africa at Newlands on Tuesday, not least Tabraiz Shamsi emerging from officially expressed doubts over his conditioning to take the wickets of Eoin Morgan, Tom Banton and Sam Curran for 38 — and deserve to do so in 10 superbly slippery overs of left-arm wrist spin. But De Kock’s maturity was the best of them.
First published by Cricbuzz.
Bulletproof Truth 