Whether South Africa have learnt their lessons from the bruising 2018 Joburg Test will be gleaned when the teams clash on the Highveld again this month.
Telford Vice | Cape Town
INDIA’S most recent Test in South Africa, at the Wanderers in January 2018, did not go gentle into that good night that falls softly when, finally, the sprinklers soak the stretch of uncovered earth that is spent and striated after serving us as many as five days of keenly contested cricket. Instead a pitch of payback for a nasty Nagpur surface during South Africa’s series in India in November 2015 dominated proceedings, and the headlines.
Michael Holding, then more a commentator on the game than its social justice conscience, held the front page: “Two out of a hundred; it’s a shit pitch. This is not a cricket pitch, this is dangerous. Call it off. Forget it. You can’t play cricket on that. I have no idea what has gone wrong but I know it’s not a good cricket pitch.” Something’s up when a fast bowler complains about a pitch that aids and abets fast bowling.
Play was suspended late on the third day, so that umpires Ian Gould and Aleem Dar could consult match referee Andy Pycroft on what to do, after Jasprit Bumrah had nailed Dean Elgar on the helmet. It was the first time in the match a batter had taken a blow to the head, but the ninth time in not quite nine sessions that the medics had been called onto the field to deal with the results of the ball thudding into various parts — mostly the hands — of different bodies. The man who then ran the Wanderers, Greg Fredericks, the chief executive of the Gauteng Cricket Board and someone rendered unafraid by his long years spent fighting apartheid, including from inside a jail cell, paid a cautious visit to the pressbox to gauge the media mood.
More than three hours later, the ICC explained: “The on-field umpires will continue to monitor the pitch, and consult the match referee should the pitch deteriorate further. The welfare of the players is paramount and two of the most experienced match officials are in charge of the game and will take appropriate decisions.” Play resumed on the fourth morning, after a delay while the maligned groundstaff dealt with a wet outfield. Parthiv Patel’s broken finger — he was replaced by Dinesh Karthik — was the closest we came to serious injury. Life went on.
Less often recalled than all that is the result and its context. India won, by 63 runs with a day and a bit to spare, on the most un-Asian pitch imaginable. Asked to meet a challenge the South Africans had calculated was beyond them, they did. And more: that was India’s first success outside Asia and the similar surfaces of the Caribbean since July 2014, when they won at Lord’s. Before that they went 14 Tests outside of their comfort zone without winning, 10 of them lost. That lean run started after they were victorious at Kingsmead in December 2010. But the Wanderers win marked the start of a happier part of the journey for Virat Kohli’s team. They have since played 20 Tests in England, Australia and New Zealand, winning seven and drawing three. Was the relative allround sledgehammer India have become, regardless of conditions, forged in the molten heat of four days in Joburg in January 2018?
The way Kohli saluted the end of the game and the series, by taking a deeply cynical bow, a veritable physical sneer, a bombastic cameo, offered strong evidence in favour of that argument. India’s captain, as tall a totem as any team have ever had, was viscerally angry, and just as clearly incandescent with pride, and as close to the edge of the cliff of unacceptable behaviour as even he could dare to go, and also defiant in the face of the arrogance of opponents who thought they could dictate terms in their own backyard. He was magnificent.
Whether South Africa have learnt their lessons from that bruising, in every sense, match will be gleaned when the teams clash on the Highveld again later this month. They were to have resumed hostilities where they left off, but practicality has trumped poetry and the series will start in Centurion on December 26 before returning to the scene of 2018’s passion on January 3 and moving to Newlands on January 11.
Of South Africa’s XI at the Wanderers almost four years ago, Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers, Faf du Plessis, Vernon Philander and Morné Morkel have retired. That’s damn near half a damn fine team. India will return with four of their five stars from that gnarly encounter: Cheteshwar Pujara and Kohli, who scored a gritty half-century each, and Bumrah and Mohammed Shami, who claimed five-wicket hauls. Shami’s 5/28 in the second innings — centred on a 10-ball burst of naked aggression that earned him three wickets for a single run — was a thing of shimmering beauty, the equal of the best fast bowling yet seen in a country not short of quality quick stuff.
The missing piece of the puzzle is Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who gutsed out 125 balls at the batting crease, was last out and ninth out for his 63 runs, took four wickets and limited the damage to 2.24 an over, and was named the player of what has turned out to be the last Test in which he has appeared.
And so that good night came and the sprinklers soaked the now cursed uncovered earth that was spent and striated after a contest that veered beyond keen into dangerous territory. It is one of the secret pleasures of cricket writers to be there when that happens, to see the pitch and the outfield take their rest and reward in respectful silence and splendid isolation unsullied by trespassers like spectators, players and umpires. As the water flows onto the ground below, so the ideas and the words they generate flow into keyboards, and from there into the ether itself, in the pressbox above. Everything about the scene changes. Coolth wafts over, the sun bids a spectacular adieu, the light fades to velvet, insects spike the sky. There is magic.
Covid has taken that from us: we will have to be out of the ground an hour after play ends. But we will, like all who see it, take the cricket with us. It is ours to keep.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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