Not for 88 years have South Africa been bowled out for a smaller molehill of runs in the first innings.
Telford Vice | Cape Town
AT least it won’t last five days. South Africans who have committed themselves watching the first Test in Christchurch, a match that starts at midnight their time, have that small mercy to cling to after their team’s worst day since …
If this was baseball, a game that takes statistics far more seriously than cricket, the clever people would come up with a number that quantifies how bad things are for a team who are bowled out for 95 and then drop four catches.
Instead, all cricket has is history and fuzzying figures. Not since July 2018, when Sri Lanka dismissed them for 73 in Galle — 22 Tests and 37 completed innings ago — have South Africa been dispatched for fewer runs. This was the 33rd time they have been rattled out in double figures, the first time the feat has been achieved by New Zealand. Only five times previously, and not since Australia dismissed them for 36 at the MCG in February 1932, or more than 88 years ago, have South Africa been bowled out for a smaller molehill in the first innings.
Matt Henry’s 7/23 is the best bowling performance against South Africa since Mitchell Johnson’s 8/61 at the WACA in December 2008. Only 10 bowlers have banked better figures in an innings against the South Africans. Henry’s figures are the best by a New Zealander against South Africa and the fourth-best against anyone. He equalled Richard Hadlee’s haul against India at the Basin Reserve in February 1976 as the best performance by a Kiwi in New Zealand.
Only Aiden Markram, Zubayr Hamza and Kyle Verreynne found the wherewithal to stay at the crease for more than an hour. Only Hamza and Verreynne faced more than 50 balls. Only Hamza and Verreynne managed to keep a partnership going past 30. No-one made more than Hamza’s 25, whose 93 minutes at the crease and 74 balls faced were highs for the innings.
If your head is now swimming with stats, you will have some idea of how South Africa’s players must have felt after they had been shot out inside 50 overs, or in little more than a session and a half. They were not alone in their grogginess, what with their compatriots blinking bleary-eyed at their televisions half a world away, wondering if it was all a dystopian dream, a nightmare on Riccarton Avenue — Hagley Oval’s street address — or a Peter Jackson epic from his splatter period.
Certainly, the scene beamed from the last outpost of the Southern Hemisphere was cinematic. Even some of those who had been to New Zealand before Covid-19 cancelled international travel were struck by how arrestingly green every flourish of vegetation was, and by the furry carpet laid out where the pitch might have been. Hang on, that was the pitch!
There was a clue about the scale of the spectacle that was about to unfold in the strains of the first song that was played after the anthems were warbled: The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony”. Bitter for some, sweet for others. For these frivolous purposes, the frequent cheers of the smattering of fans around the ground were close enough to symphonic. More so, at any rate, than the discordant groaning in South Africa.
By then the drama was underway, albeit out of sight. The first version of South Africa’s XI that was released by management was indeed the combination who played. But a more formal rendition of the team that came out six minutes later did not include Hamza. Instead, Wiaan Mulder was named. Clearly, that was inaccurate and was explained by South Africa’s media manager as a simple factual error of the copy-and-paste variety. We’ve all been there and done that.
But, in the South African context, the facts that Hamza is brown and Mulder is white gave this ostensibly minor issue a life of its own. A further complication is that Hamza was favoured over Ryan Rickelton — who is also white — despite Dean Elgar having made the case, three times, for Sarel Erwee to fill the vacancy for a top order batter left by Covid absentee Keegan Petersen. Elgar’s argument was that Erwee had spent a long time in the squad waiting to make his debut — for four consecutive series since December 2020. Erwee was duly given his chance.
The uncapped Rickelton has been part of the Test dressing room since the series against India in December and January. Hamza, who hadn’t played a Test since January 2020, was called up after Petersen was ruled out on February 2. Thus Rickelton is senior to Hamza in the current squad. Yet Elgar’s logic seems not to have applied to Rickelton’s claims to a place in the side.
Rickelton has made three centuries and a 90 in his five innings in provincial first-case cricket this season. Hamza has a highest score of 94 from seven innings in the same competition, and one century in his 11 trips to the crease in the format in 2021/22. Clearly, Rickelton has the edge. So why is Hamza playing and not Rickelton?
Among South Africans, the first casualty of conversations about race is nuance, followed by truth. The silos are deep and vacated only to vent at the other side of what is not a conversation but a cynical shouting match. How many of us will acknowledge that Rickelton has been hard done by? How many will concur that Hamza was South Africa’s best batter on Thursday? How many will wonder why Markram, who had scored 80 runs in his last eight innings, all as an opener, was not dropped instead of moved to No. 3? That way, Rickelton as well as Hamza could have played. How many could see that, despite his struggles, Markram was among the main reasons South Africa didn’t have an even worse day?
By the time some of those questions were swirling, or not, Elgar had been dismissed before anyone else in a Test for the first time since the match against India in Centurion in December. That was also the last time South Africa lost a Test. It was only three games ago, in which Elgar was bound to stick around for longer than the under-performing Markram. But it was in those matches that Elgar established his authority as South Africa’s captain. He hung tough and was a big part of the reason his team won. So to see him squirt Henry to third slip with the 10th delivery of the match was ominous. It was also rare: only in 11 of his 116 innings as an opener has Elgar faced fewer balls.
Maybe the way the South Africans batted was still banging around their heads when first Marco Jansen, then Hamza, Temba Bavuma and Rassie van der Dussen spilled catches they would have expected to take. The first went down in the 10th over, the fourth five balls before stumps. If the sound of South Africa’s innings was the clatter of wickets, New Zealand’s reply was filled with the silence that takes over when a chance is squandered.
Somehow, given all that, the South Africans managed to chop off New Zealand’s top order and limit their lead to 21. When you’ve been dismissed for 95, that’s a happy ending. The visitors can’t get their first-innings wickets back. They can’t retake the catches they grassed. But they have the chance to fix things, and the bowlers and the conditions for that job. What they don’t have is time, because this won’t last five days.
First published by Cricbuzz.
Bulletproof Truth 