Joburg’s crowd can’t often be called fair, but they know winners when they see them. And they know how to give them their due.
Telford Vice / Cape Town
ABOVE us only Sky. Sky full of stars. Sky’s the limit. Loosed in the Sky with diamonds. Or, if you want something less obvious, Up, up and away, or Walking on sunshine, or Come fly with me.
How about some Jimi Hendrix: “Excuse me while I kiss the Sky. Or Bob Dylan: “No-one is free, even the birds are chained to the Sky.” Or another rock star: “Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset Sky.” Rabindranath Tagore always had the right words.
Excuse the gratuitous capitalisation. It’s what happens when the modern patron saint of cricket’s headline writers is cleared for take-off like Suryakumar Yadav was at the Wanderers on Thursday. Fifty off 32. The next 50 off 23. Seven fours in all. Eight sixes. They hurried into being a century that never looked like not materialising. It was ended the ball after it was made thrillingly real. And then, in the field, in the third over of South Africa’s reply, a turned ankle that brought the curtain down on Sky’s involvement. The pain. The poetry. Who needs verbs when you have pure vectors of batting like this.
Some deliveries Yadav hit, mostly to the off side, with visceral violence. Others, especially so fine to leg that they careened directly behind his recoiled back, his bat met with exquisite timing. Often the ball was chastened into areas of the field it should not, by all that is orthodox, been in. But this was not about orthodoxy. It was about what happens when the logic of hitting a cricket ball to maximum effect and efficiency disregards the received ideas of how to do so. Consequently, it’s as difficult to imagine Yadav playing like this in earlier, more stifling eras as it is to think those who would have watched him then would not have been just as enthralled by how he played.
It is also hard to imagine Yadav not enjoying every instant of his time at the crease. Even through the separation cast by a screen, his dealings with the press this week have revealed a man who is able to see the happiness beyond the pressures of playing not only international cricket but playing for — and captaining, no less — the biggest team on the planet. At 33 Yadav is closer to the end of his career than the beginning, but what a lot of fun he is going to have before he takes off his batting gloves for the last time.
Would that more players brought Yadav’s attitude to the game. Then they might have some of his success: Thursday’s feat was his fourth T20I century, which earned him parity with Glenn Maxwell and Rohit Sharma for the most hundreds scored in this format. Note that Maxwell has had 35 more innings than Yadav and Sharma 83 more.
Not that we should allow such trifling details to obstruct our view of an innings that was of such shimmering power that the first handshake offered to Yadav after his fire had been extinguished came from Lizaad Williams, the bowler who had him caught on the backward square leg fence. Several of South Africa’s other players clamoured to offer their congratulations.
Yadav was carried to the boundary and beyond by the appreciation of a crowd, wearing many colours, that had come to see a cricket match — not to watch one team play cricket. On the evidence of this year’s men’s ODI World Cup, had Yadav been part of a foreign team playing in India, you fancy he would have left the scene to the indifferent silence of thousands blanketed in blue shirts.
The Wanderers’ honest generosity did not end there. Having watched the Indians pile up 201/7, the thousands stayed to see South Africa bowled out for 95. Mohammed Siraj started the first over with two slips and ended it with three. The South Africans were 42/3 inside the powerplay, and then lost 8/53 with Kuldeep Yadav tripping the light fantastic for a career-best 5/17.
Joburg’s crowd can’t often be called fair, but they know winners when they see them. And they know how to give them their due, which tumbled from the stands and grass banks in abundance for a side who inflicted South Africa’s third-heaviest defeat in their 169 decided matches in the format.
India batters and bowlers revelled in swinging and seaming conditions that were also true and fast. This theoretically most un-Indian of grounds is where the Indians have been most successful across the formats in this country: won six, lost five. At no other venue in South Africa have India won more games than they have lost.
Thus they will look forward to their return to the Wanderers for the start of the ODI series on Sunday, and doubtless be disappointed that neither of the Tests will be played there. But then the Sky is yours, India. You can’t ask for much more.
Cricbuzz
Bulletproof Truth 