SA stumble in all departments.
Telford Vice | Cape Town
ON the 283rd day of his 42nd year, wearing a cap that hid his thinning hair but did nothing to disguise his greying dreads and beard, Chris Gayle lurched into a cartwheel. All creaky elbows, wobbly knees and saggy hamstrings, he oozed through the air awkwardly before landing with the grace of a piano being dumped onto a pavement from four floors up. Babies surely would have blushed.
With his first ball of the match, the seventh of the game, old man Gayle had had Reeza Hendricks — 10 years his junior — stumped. By a smidgen, but stumped nonetheless. The fourth T20I in Grenada on Thursday was that kind of crazy: a compendium of chaos that rarely approached what the fuddy duddies would consider a respectable game of cricket, and which West Indies won by 21 runs to level the series with a match to play.
Aiden Markram, fresh from bleeding 24 runs in two overs on Tuesday, when he shared the new ball, took the new ball this time — and sailed for 20 runs; the most West Indies have yet scored in the first over of a T20I. The home side rifled 57 runs at the cost of two wickets off the powerplay, then shambled to 14/2 in the next five overs — which were bowled by George Linde and Tabraiz Shamsi, who took 4/29 combined.
But Kieron Pollard, who had looked like an imposter, much less a captain, in scoring two runs in the first three matches of the series, rerailed the innings by hitting an unbeaten 51 off 25 balls to help his team reach 167/6 and thereby match the highest total of the rubber.
Anrich Nortjé, Lungi Ngidi and Kagiso Rabada leaked 66 runs off the last four overs. Weirder still, David Miller dropped two catches in the deep. But you know you’re really living in interesting times when it’s up to an anarchist of the crease like Quinton de Kock to restore a semblance of order. At 110/6 in the 16th over why wouldn’t you hammer the next delivery over long-on for six to reach 50 off 37 balls, as De Kock did?
But, when he spooned a full toss off Dwayne Bravo to point with 18 balls left in the game and 42 runs needed, the sting was drawn from the contest. De Kock’s 43-ball 60 was as good as anything any batter has banked in this series. It wasn’t good enough on Thursday. No-one else in South Africa’s line-up made more than Markram’s 20, and with Bravo ripping through the lower order to take a career-best 4/19 there was no stopping the Windies.
Only in the first match of the series, which West Indies won by eight wickets with five overs to spare, have they lived up to their deserved status as favourites. But here we are, level at 2-2 and heading into a decider on Saturday.
Before Thursday, South Africa had won two tight games batting first. Had fielding first this time made a difference? “We conceded 20 runs in our first over; that’s going to put you under pressure whether you’re bowling first or second,” Temba Bavuma told an online press conference. “And when you finish off your bowling innings like that it doesn’t matter when you’re bowling, and our batters didn’t pitch up.”
Murphy’s law, in other words. But beware Finagle’s corollary to Murphy’s law: “Anything that can go wrong, will — at the worst possible moment.” The fifth T20I on Saturday might be that moment.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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