Crashes of 5/41 and 9/70 last week were followed by 5/37 on Saturday.
Telford Vice | Cape Town
ANOTHER day, another collapse. Watching South Africa bat has become an exercise in ominousness, like waiting for the bogeyman to emerge from under the bed. So the hexakosioihexekontahexaphobics among us shouldn’t read the next paragraph.
Add South Africa’s total of 201 in Rawalpindi to the 220 and 245 they made in Karachi and you get what christians call the number of the beast: 666, the mere mention of which makes hexakosioihexekontahexaphobics pull the blankets over their heads and wait for the evil to slither back from whence it came.
South Africa’s crashes of 5/41 and 9/70 last week were followed by a slide of 5/37 on Saturday. Last month they suffered a shambles of 9/84 against Sri Lanka at the Wanderers, where England smashed and grabbed 5/95 and 8/93 in January last year.
It’s pointless asking why this keeps happening. “Trust me, if I knew I would let you know,” Quinton de Kock said after the Karachi Test. “And if we knew how to fix them we wouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Damn straight.
But, while they persist in giving away wickets like politicians spraying promises during election campaigns, the South Africans will be asked. Because, unlike politicians, players face a vote of confidence every time they take the field and are held accountable for their failures to deliver.
Of the visitors’ frontline batters, only Rassie van der Dussen — who was undone first ball by a delivery from Hasan Ali that didn’t get up — had an excuse this time. The rest all faced at least 20 balls. Aiden Markram saw 60 and Wiaan Mulder 83. Temba Bavuma’s unbeaten 44 was assembled from 138 deliveries, as painstakingly as a bicycle built from matchsticks. He set an example, but South Africa aren’t often going to be in a winning position if Bavuma’s teammates score as slowly as he does. Just as true is that they would fare far worse without Bavuma’s stickability.
South Africa are averaging 13.32 per wicket in this series, and they’re better than that: of their XI, only Rabada and Anrich Nortjé have lower career batting averages. So George Linde would have been justified in having a moan about the batters. He knew better than to do that. “It is what it is,” he told an online press conference. “You don’t get out on purpose. [Pakistan] bowled well, so you’ve got to give credit to them. Our batsmen have gameplans and I’m pretty confident they’re going to take us over the line in the next game … in the next innings.” The first version of what Linde said was no doubt a slip of the tongue, but it is likely to be proved accurate.
Hasan recovered impressively from an indifferent first Test to take 5/54. He bowled with enough pace and more than enough passion, and deserved his success. But the innings was riddled with the now familiar tropes of poor shot selection and shoddy running between the wickets.
South Africa’s bowlers kept them in the contest early in Pakistan’s second innings. Kagiso Rabada trapped Imran Butt in front before the first run was scored off the 26th ball, and Keshav Maharaj had Babar Azam leg-before, dismissing him for the third time in four innings — or as often as Nathan Lyon and Rabada but in fewer matches, and more often in fewer matches than Mitchell Starc and James Anderson. Linde bowled nine overs for a dozen runs and took three wickets. And they weren’t just any wickets: Azhar Ali, Fawad Alam and Faheem Ashraf.
But three dropped catches, all close to the bat, released the pressure. With a lead of 200, Mohammad Rizwan well set and four wickets in hand, the advantage is firmly with the home side.
Not for the first time, South Africa’s batting had let them down and tilted the narrative in the wrong direction. Would it be the last time that happens? “I don’t look too deeply into batting,” Linde said. “As a spin bowler I’m focused on that. When it’s my chance I’ve got my gameplans, so I’m sure the batters have theirs.”
Maybe the batters could learn from him. Linde is playing in his third Test. He faced 81 balls in his debut innings, against India in Ranchi in October 2019, and 55 in the second innings. In Karachi, he stood firm for 64 and 29 deliveries, and for 21 in Rawalpindi.
Doubtless that kind of grit fuelled his optimism when he was asked how many runs he thought South Africa were equipped to score to level the series. “Anything under 300, we’ll take that,” he said. “Hopefully it will be 250 or 220, whatever. Realistically, under 270 or 300 I’m pretty confident we’ll chase it down.” On the available evidence, many would reckon South Africa have about as much chance of doing that as they have of correctly spelling hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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