“Ja, but our standard is high.” – Heinrich Klaasen refuses to feel better about a narrow loss.
Telford Vice | Cape Town
SOUTH Africa’s players huddled so tightly together on Lahore’s outfield on Thursday that you would have struggled to smuggle a team sheet between them. Heinrich Klaasen spoke earnestly, hands slicing through evening air heavy with dew to punctuate his points. His players listened intently. David Miller made a significant contribution to the conversation. Klaasen handed a cap to debutant Jacques Snyman, who received it as if he had been given the keys to the car of his dreams.
Eyes locked. Shoulders overlapped. Heads nodded to the unmistakable rhythm of agreement. Even from the other hemisphere you could feel the unity. There was heat in that huddle, which was more a hug.
For South Africans weary of turning on their televisions to see what new hell has befallen the side in Pakistan, they were the picture of a team as opposed to a collection of individuals. It helped that none of them had played in the Tests, and so didn’t bring baggage from Karachi and Rawalpindi, where South Africa were almost as good at beating themselves as Pakistan were at winning. Of the XI who had played in South Africa’s previous T20I, against England at Newlands in December, only Reeza Hendricks, Lutho Sipamla and Tabraiz Shamsi were in the team. Another good thing: England won that series 3-0.
Even so, South Africa took 200 T20I caps into Thursday’s match: 10 more than Pakistan, which you wouldn’t have thought considering the noise made, far and wide, about a looming mismatch. All this bunch of South Africans needed to convince, most importantly, themselves that they belonged on the same field as opponents who had already been written up as victors was for something to go conspicuously right, preferably early in the piece …
Second ball of the match. Babar Azam bunts it to the on side and sets off. The bowler, the left-arm spinning, right-arm throwing Bjorn Fortuin, hares after it. He sprawls to make a scragging stop and, seeing a fraction more than one stump, throws from a prone position. Bails balloon, stumps splay. Babar is short of his ground by a metre and more. Roll credits.
It doesn’t go more conspicuously right than that. But, of course, the credits didn’t roll then. First Mohammad Rizwan scored 104 not out, his second unbeaten century in five days and an innings as bristling with aggression as his previous hundred was built on discipline. And the lack of firepower in South Africa’s attack, denuded of Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortjé, was exposed. Pakistan play without the arrogance that sours the impression other teams make, but they are perhaps the most alpha male of all sides — they will bully bowling that doesn’t stand up for itself. Only Shamsi, who turned the ball sharply in his first match of the tour, escaped with an economy rate of less than a run a ball. Junior Dala was at the other end of the equation, sailing for 25 off two overs. Happily, although Rizwan was dropped twice in the 90s, the overall standard of South Africa’s fielding was a notch or three up from what the Test team delivered.
Seven totals higher than Pakistan’s effort of 169/6 had been scored in the first innings of the previous 11 T20Is in Lahore. And all but one of the six times the team batting first had won a day-night T20I there, they had made more than the home side’s total. How big a factor would the thickening dew be in the second innings? Enough to fog up Aleem Dar’s glasses and thus furrow his brow, for a start.
Hendricks faced only a dozen deliveries in an opening stand of 53 dominated by Janneman Malan, who hit eight fours — mostly muscled to the on side — in his 44. But Hendricks saw Usman Qadir’s leg break hit the top of Malan’s off stump and his googly crash into the top of Snyman’s middle stump. Then Miller flashed at a delivery from Faheem Ashraf that faded across the left-hander, and nicked it. At 83/3, and needing more than 10 from each of the last eight overs, South Africa’s challenge was waning.
Klaasen joined Hendricks to rekindle it with a stand that reached 32 before Klaasen picked out the man on the square leg boundary. But before that he was party to something previously unknown. Given out leg-before to Qadir’s googly, Klaasen offered up a prayer to the third umpire. Missing leg, the gizmo said. And with that Dar’s record of never having been proven wrong in T20I referrals was erased at the 12th attempt.
Hendricks ran himself out for 54 by dashing for a single that was never there after losing sight of a ball he had edged into his pads. It needed a dive from the swooping Rizwan to complete the dismissal. Surely that was the end of the South Africans?
It looked that way when they headed into the last over needing 19. Two singles accrued before Dwaine Pretorius hammered Ashraf over long-on for six. Another single left the equation at 10 off two. Fortuin, hobbling on a twisted ankle, found the wherewithal to fashion a four over his shoulder. One ball. Six to get. Fortuin lined up the midwicket fence, but didn’t get enough bat on it and the ground-hugging ball was fielded at deep backward square.
Even though the South Africans showed more fight on Thursday than in Karachi and Rawalpindi, Pakistan deserved their win, not least because of the brilliance of Rizwan and Qadir. No-one needs to tell the visitors it’s a long way from going down with credit in a T20I to competing in a Test, but South Africans could see something on their televisions they haven’t spotted for a while: light at the end of the tunnel.
South Africans besides Klaasen, that is: “Ja, but our standard is high. One or two things with the bowling didn’t go according to plan, so we’ll reassess that. And then those four or five overs in the middle [of the innings when Qadir went for two runs off each of his first two overs], when we really made life very difficult for ourselves. Because we could have chased between seven and 10 in the last over and got over the line easily. It is pleasing to see we are playing good cricket, but it’s frustrating and disappointing by our standards. We know exactly what we want and what we need to do to be a successful team.”
He sounded so South African. He sounded utterly real. He sounded like the captain of a team, not a collection of individuals.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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