2nd ODI preview: Off to Kingsmead? Take an umbrella

South Africa have gone 10 games without consecutive wins.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

THE last time the weather didn’t kibosh an ODI involving England at Kingsmead, Nasser Hussain was their captain and Javagal Srinath suffered the last of his 11 first-ball dismissals in a blue India shirt. It was February 2003 and India won that World Cup clash by 82 runs. Since then both of England’s games in the format against South Africa in Durban have been washed out.

And, wouldn’t you know it, a 90% chance of rain has been forecast for Friday’s second ODI. That will hardly be news to South Africa. They’ve suffered no more than one washout at any of their other home venues, but four of the 38 ODIs they have played at Kingsmead have ended inconclusively because of the elements. When nature stays out of the way in Durban, South Africa are twice as likely to win: they’ve been victorious in 11 and lost 22 ODIs there.

On the evidence of the first game of the series, at Newlands on Tuesday, rain may be good news for the visitors. They were as flat as Table Mountain itself in all departments, blowing the advantage of an opening stand of 51 between Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow as well as a recovery partnership of 91 shared by Joe Denly and Chris Woakes to finish with a mediocre 258/8. And then failing utterly to put a dent in South Africa’s reply, which reached its target with only three wickets down and 14 balls remaining.

So the South Africans won’t be best pleased if Friday’s game doesn’t go the distance. Having crashed to a hattrick of defeats in the Test series against England, Tuesday’s win was welcomed as a sign of better things to come. It was Quinton de Kock’s first match as South Africa’s appointed captain, and he responded to that challenge by scoring 107. With him in a stand of 170 was Temba Bavuma, who uncorked a hitherto hidden gift for white-ball batting at international level with a scintillating 98. That followed Tabraiz Shamsi returning from proving his fitness at a conditioning camp to take 3/38.

It’s only one game and it’s only an ODI at that, but considering what went before it’s not difficult to understand why South Africans want to consider Tuesday’s triumph a turning point. They won’t be keen to remember that their team also won the first Test before their form plummetted, but that only means they will be even more intent on seeing how De Kock’s side go in Durban on Friday. Consecutive victories? Imagine that.

South Africa have gone 10 games without winning two in a row, a streak of inconsistency that started after they beat Sri Lanka and Australia at last year’s World Cup — by which time they had already been eliminated from the running for the knockout rounds.

So South Africa will want to keep doing what they did in Cape Town, which would earn them series honours. England will be bent on putting that game behind them. But if the weather has its way, all hopes will be on hold util the last match of the rubber at the Wanderers on Sunday. 

When: Friday February 7, 2020. 1pm Local Time  

Where: Kingsmead, Durban

What to expect: This is one of South Africa’s slowest pitches, but all four five-wicket hauls in ODIs have been claimed by seamers. Runs flow faster — 4.85 an over — than at Newlands — 4.70 — although not as fluidly as at the Wanderers — 5.16, not least because Kingsmead’s outfield isn’t the fastest. Teams have put up 300 or more than 300 six times in Durban, but only once in the second innings. In the 46 ODIs played here, teams have been dismissed 27 times.   

Team news

South Africa

Why fix what ain’t broke? But, having handed Jon-Jon Smuts and Lutho Sipamla ODI debuts in Cape Town, South Africa might be tempted to blood one or more of left-arm spinner Bjorn Fortuin, opening batter Janneman Malan and altogether uncapped wicketkeeper-batter Kyle Verreynne. Malan, in particular, looks like cracking the nod after Reeza Hendricks’ lacklustre showing — caught behind for six off 14 balls — at Newlands.    

Possible XI: Quinton de Kock, Janneman Malan, Temba Bavuma, Rassie van der Dussen, Jon-Jon Smuts, David Miller, Andile Phehlukwayo, Beuran Hendricks, Lungi Ngidi, Lutho Sipamla, Tabraiz Shamsi.   

England

Opener Dawid Malan’s exclusion at Newlands didn’t make much sense, so he should win what would be his second cap in the format. Fast bowler Saqib Mahmood could make an ODI debut. Truth be told, England looked so out if it in Cape Town that coach Chris Silverwood would be forgiven for emptying his bench.

Possible XI: Dawid Malan, Jason Roy, Joe Root, Eoin Morgan, Tom Banton, Moeen Ali, Tom Curran, Chris Woakes, Adil Rashid, Matt Parkinson, Saqib Mahmood.

“It looks a little bit dry, but Kingsmead always has that extra bounce and I enjoy that. I don’t feel like I need the ball to spin. Most spinner enjoy the extra bounce.” – Tabraiz Shamsi on the Durban pitch.

“We’ve lost games of cricket before and come back to win the series, so I don’t think it’s a massive confidence knock. The boys are going to be training hard trying to level the series tomorrow.” – Tom Curran talks a good practice session.  

First published by Cricbuzz.  

Snapshots from a contest long since decided

The day’s play ended as it began: with England’s players, trophy stumps held high, applauding the Barmy Army.

TELFORD VICE at The Wanderers

AFTER 1,508 deliveries of seam, we saw spin for the first time in the match. But only for three overs: five of Joe Root’s offerings were dismissed for four, another for six. Another 126 balls of seam were bowled before Root resorted to Joe Denly, the poor person’s part-time leg spinner, who somehow — half-trackers, full tosses and all — escaped with only 19 runs being taken off his three overs.

On days like Monday at the Wanderers, it’s the little things that stick in the memory. Like the England slip cordon applauding Billy Cooper, the Barmy Army’s trumpet player, after he provided the accompaniment for the morning’s rendition of Jerusalem. And the Army, after tea, repeatedly serenading Cooper with: “There’s only one Billy Trumpet!” Sadly, Monday was Cooper’s last day among them. He is hanging up his horn for good.

And Rassie van der Dussen inventing a dance move — let’s call it the squashed paperclip — to deal with a short delivery from Chris Woakes — and ending up on his back. And Van der Dussen wearing, willingly, a 141 kilometre-an-hour delivery from Mark Wood on the chest. And coming within two runs of scoring what would not only have been his first century but also the first scored against England in the fourth innings of a Wanderers Test. Instead he equalled the record Herschelle Gibbs set in January 2005.

And Vernon Philander walking out to bat, torn hamstring and all, at the fall of the sixth wicket, with no hope of the 227 needed for victory being scored, to do right by his team in his last few minutes — 13, as it turned out — as a Test cricketer. Because that’s what pros do.

And Faf du Plessis leaping in reaction to a ball from Wood that reared off a length. The handle of Du Plessis’ bat, which he promptly dropped, got the job done. But, after returning to earth with his footing unsure, he almost shambled onto his stumps.

And Du Plessis jumping again facing Stokes, and the ball again smashing into the handle, and the bat snapping at its splice. And, immediately after that, Sam Curran’s throw hitting Du Plessis on the pads. And Jos Buttler and Du Plessis putting themselves, directly and provocatively, in each other’s paths as South Africa’s captain headed towards Stuart Broad. Buttler stopped in the same way that a football defender does when he knows an oncoming attacker can’t help but clatter into him. Buttler and Du Plessis collided at the shoulder, and Du Plessis continued on his way to shove a finger in Broad’s face to punctuate some apparently choice words. Seven balls later Du Plessis played on to Stokes and fumed off the field at least as angrily as Daddles the duck. Well done, messrs. Buttler and Broad.

Why the snapshots? Because this contest was decided while Wood and Broad and Broad were hammering 82, a Wanderers record for the last wicket, on Saturday. Everything that happened after that was a prelude to England clinching their series victory as convincingly as they did. Even the three hours and one minute that passed between the dismissals of Dean Elgar and Du Plessis on Monday — when the feeling that, with the help of a miracle or 12, South Africa might just do something outrageous gained a toehold — couldn’t change that.

England deserved nothing less. They came to South Africa as a team that few trusted to be able to knuckle down and deliver, and they proved otherwise. For South Africa, who have lost eight of their last nine Tests, the only way is up. That’s once they work out which way up is. They have enlisted important people to say important things, but so far they have done precious little that can be held up as an achievement.

The day’s play ended as it began: with England’s players, all of them this time, trophy stumps held high, applauding the Barmy Army. It was not an ounce of comfort for the silently, sadly watching South Africans to know that, days from now, many of England’s supporters will have bid their golden sunshine goodbye and surrendered to the grimmest days of England’s winter. They will take with them memories of warmth and friendliness and beer so comparatively cheap it might as well have been given away. Please come again. But not until South Africa have remembered who they are and how they used to play cricket.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Batting, bowling and boorishness

“Hit him again!” – a Wanderers spectator as Zak Crawley prepared to face his first delivery after being felled by a bouncer to the head from Anrich Nortjé.

TELFORD VICE at The Wanderers

DROPS dripped. That’s a sentence, complete and perfect, from Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It was just as true about the Wanderers on Friday. Drops started dripping, in their millions, late on Thursday night and continued unabated until the afternoon. Drops also dripped, in singles, from the pressbox ceiling around the time of the scheduled 10am start. A bucket placed beneath caught them apologetically. You might say it was a sorry sight all round. And you might also have made a decent dent in reading War and Peace as the dreary nothingness of the morning wore on towards a lost day.

But, at 1.20pm, Vernon Philander stood at the top of his mark at the Golf Course End on one of cricket’s fastest drying outfields, Zak Crawley awaited him, and away we went. And for the best part of the next three hours not a lot happened. For South Africa, anyway. The closest they came to putting anything like a dent in England’s batting was in the third over before tea, when Crawley missed a pull and Anrich Nortjé dinged him on the helmet with a bouncer timed at 149 kilometres per hour. Play was held up for eight minutes while Crawley was medically assessed and tried several replacement helmets on for size before being allowed to continue. When he did, up went a cry from the country’s most raucous crowd: “Hit him again!” That followed Dom Sibley winning a reprieve after being given out caught behind to a legside delivery from Beuran Hendricks that flicked a pad, and surviving being caught in the gully because Philander had bowled a no-ball.   

Aside from those minor spikes the Richter scale readout of the first half of Friday’s play was a serenely level line. On the meanest junkyard dog of a pitch in the land, and having opted to fling five fast bowlers into the fray, South Africa looked as if they had brought a plastic straw to a lightsabre fight. Hendricks, instead of Nortjé, sharing the new ball with Philander looked too much like the blunder of Dane Paterson, instead of the now banned Kagiso Rabada, doing so at St George’s Park. But there was poignance in the fact that Philander is playing his last Test and Hendricks his first. “I’m always tuning into ‘Vern’, making sure I can get enough info out of him,” Hendricks said after stumps.” Even so, their shortish length and widish line allowed Crawley and Sibley to select balls to hit as if they were picking their favourite bits out of a salad.

Crawley drove straight with aplomb — once almost sawing Sibley in half — and Sibley repeatedly showcased his mastery of one of the most challenging strokes in the game, the on-drive.

The last ball before tea, a legside effort from Nortjé that Sibley smeared to fine leg for four, took England to 100 without loss. That marked the third time in succession in the series that South Africa’s bowlers had failed to strike in the opening session of a match. It also sealed the only occasion in the 16 Wanderers Tests since Graeme Smith and Herschelle Gibbs put on 149 against West Indies in December 2003 that a pair of openers have shared a century in the very first innings of a match here, only the third time it’s happened at all in the 41 Wanderers Tests, and the first time it’s been accomplished by the visiting team.

The Wanderers is an ominous 13th on the list of all 121 Test grounds in terms of the lowest average for the first wicket: 31.51, or marginally outside the top 10 percentile. If that doesn’t get the point across, this should: the Wanderers is a damnably difficult place to bat, and exponentially more so on a fresh pitch against well-rested bowlers armed with a new ball.

Clearly, no-one told Crawley and Sibley, who seemed as at home as if they were having a laugh on the Kent and Surrey featherbeds of their youth. “They left well and didn’t play at anything that was loose,” Hendricks said. “I was surprised at how comfortable they looked.” By now, someone has told them that no England pair had shared a century stand in the first innings of a Test since Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook put up 196 against Australia at Lord’s in July 2009.

They did so with too much help from their friends in the other dressingroom. “We told ourselves [at tea] that we were better than what we bowled,” Hendricks said. He took that seriously, and in the third over after the resumption another of his scrambled seam legside stranglers did for Sibley. Sixteen balls later Crawley played a weird, lazy hybrid between a stroke and a leave and was taken behind. Then came two grassed chances in the space of 23 deliveries by Pieter Malan and Dwaine Pretorius, neither of them straightforward. Drops dripped, you might say. Only for Joe Denly and Ben Stokes to be dismissed 16 balls apart, and a match that had listed heavily in one side’s favour less than two hours previously had been yanked back to something like level with all the rudeness that is visited on pedestrians who dare try cross Johannesburg’s car-centric, pavement-poor streets.

And the Wanderers, like Stokes discovered as he stalked off, is this city congealed into one wet spot; the kind of place were boorishness comes standard. Even the umpires, Rod Tucker and Joel Wilson, weren’t spared when they called time for bad light. They were booed all the way off the ground and assailed by a loud and clear, “Fuck you!” Welcome, gentlemen, neither to war nor peace, but to Joburg.

First published by Cricbuzz.

South Africa’s bunless, meatless, bloodless bowling

“What we wanted to achieve we achieved today.” – Charl Langeveldt is a satisfied bowling consultant.

TELFORD VICE at St George’s Park

AT the Dukes fast food stand in the parking lot at St George’s Park, R60 buys “The Big Vern”. If it lives up to the chalkboard menu’s promise, it’s a monster: “flame grilled double beef patty, triple bacon, double cheese burger with sweet red onion, gerkins [sic] and lettuce on a toasted sesame seed bun”. In only the seventh over of the third Test, Quinton de Kock stood as close to the stumps as the first Dukes customer in the queue was to the counter. De Kock was keeping to Vernon Philander.

That the pitch would be slow was no surprise. Should someone profess knowledge of a fast surface at St George’s Park, they’re in politics. That the pitch would be as slow as has transpired wasn’t expected, but neither was two solid weeks of humidity layered onto an already sizzling summer. These things happen, and there was one of the most successful new-ball bowlers of his generation in his fourth over of the match, running in from the Park Drive End brandishing the still-new ball towards a wicketkeeper stationed snugly just 22 yards away.

Still, that was more explicable than the choice of who barrelled in from the Duckpond End once Philander had got through those first six deliveries for a single. Dane Paterson is a beefy medium pacer who has collected 21 wickets at an average of 21.80 and an economy rate of 2.82 in five first-class matches for the Cobras this season, and he has done a decent job in some of his four one-day internationals and eight T20s for South Africa. But using him to open the bowling on debut on a pitch as flat as the nearby beaches and in an attack that harboured Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortjé seemed to make little sense, even if England’s openers, Zak Crawley and Dom Sibley, had managed an hour or more at the crease together just once in their previous four partnerships in the series and would need all their discipline to stay attuned to the conditions. Charl Langeveldt, South Africa’s bowling consultant, saw the matter differently: “We stuck to our gameplan; trying to keep them under two-and-a-half for long periods. We tried to bowl straighter lines. What we wanted to achieve we achieved today.” So it wasn’t pretty, Langeveldt appeared to want to say. So what? 

Philander reeled off a first spell of four overs for five runs. He bowled only seven more overs in the day. Surely that was too light a workload for a strike specialist of his calibre? “The surface doesn’t suit ‘Vern’ that much,” Langeveldt said. “It’s quite slow, and batsmen can adjust [to how the ball moves] off the wicket. ‘Vern’ is great with the new ball but, as we’ve found out in these conditions, we’ll use him sparingly.” In that case, shouldn’t Philander have been spared the bother entirely? “He’s doing a job for us. It’s a holding job. If he takes wickets with the new ball it’s effective. If there’s any reverse swing he can be effective as well. I wasn’t thinking of not playing him.”

As for Paterson: “On this surface we needed to make the new ball count. ‘KG’s [Rabada] a wonderful bowler with the new ball, but Paterson does bowl a fuller length — he makes the batsman play more.” There’s logic in Langeveldt’s argument, but could he appreciate that others might see South Africa’s approach as resignation to the view that the pitch mitigated against attacking bowling? “Everyone has an opinion. You always look to strike. We looked to strike with the new ball. We just thought with a bit of moisture in the air this morning we needed to bowl a fuller length. In the second innings ‘KG’ will take the new ball again.”

Not that Rabada didn’t have his moments, putting the first chink in England’s armour four overs after lunch when he had Sibley caught at leg gully to end the opening stand at 70. Then, in the seventh over after tea, he nailed the top of a leaving Joe Root’s off-stump with a delivery that stayed low. That triggered a raw and raucous celebration by Rabada that was reminiscent of how he sent Steve Smith on his way at this ground in March 2018 — when the two players collided and Rabada had to fight off a ban on appeal. This time, although shoulders came close to connecting, there was no physical contact. Fast bowlers like Rabada, Langeveldt explained, walked a tightrope: “KG’s that type of person, he’s always looking for a scrap to get him motivated. It gets him fired up. I always say to him him, ‘Just control your aggression’. You need fast bowlers to be aggressive. It’s hard work on this wicket and the plan worked. We spoke about it: a fuller length to Joe Root to try and get him lbw or bowled, and it worked. Fair play to him; he celebrated.”

Rabada’s reaction might also have owed something to the challenge of trying to bowl fast on a pitch that is all about about the ooze, rather than the flow, of runs and wickets. It’s a surface that doesn’t give a damn about what anyone wants or even needs. You get what you get, now get on with it.

De Kock’s burger bar boogaloo up to the stumps was the first suggestion that Faf du Plessis was re-assessing his tactics. Confirmation was surely Keshav Maharaj wheeling away as early as the sixth over before lunch. And on and on he bowled until his wheels must have felt like falling off — all the way through the second session and until the 10th over before the close, when the new ball was due and immediately taken, this time by Nortjé and Philander. Maharaj’s spell of 30 overs, the equivalent of bowling an entire session from both ends, cost less than two runs an over: still another indication that, on this pitch, patience will be an even more valuable virtue than usual. Maharaj was back for two more overs to end the day’s play. And for all that his sole reward was the wicket of Joe Denly, who might still have been batting had De Kock not yelled a lone appeal after spotting that the ball had struck the pad flap before Denly middled it. In his next over Maharaj might also have removed the ICC’s newly minted “player of the year” for the third time in five innings in the rubber, but Ben Stokes escaped by the skin of an umpire’s call because the delivery had hit him outside the line. “He created a lot of chances, he kept the runrate down, and he looked the most threatening of all the bowlers on that wicket,” Langeveldt said of Maharaj’s endeavour.

He bowled a smidgen less than three times the number of overs Philander sent down on Thursday, and is surely set for many more as the match unfolds. Perhaps ‘Big Vern’ should do the decent thing and buy the man a burger.

First published by Cricbuzz.

South Africa’s brain farts leave bad smell

Rassie van der Dussen’s 140-ball 17 was a labour of more than three hours. But its end was another episode of the mental flatulence that cost South Africa the match.

TELFORD VICE at Newlands

FOR the first 93 minutes of play at Newlands on Tuesday, the improbable seemed distantly possible. For a while, something brewed in the quiet place in South Africans’ minds where they go when they want to imagine a reality different from the obvious. For many of them, thoughts of Adelaide in November 2012 were prominent.

Then, Faf du Plessis batted for more than a day on debut to score a century, save the match, write his own script as a man for the trenches, and start his journey towards the Test captaincy. On Tuesday, after 93 minutes, or 27 minutes before lunch, he played the stroke of a dolt — the kind of shot he refused to downgrade to against the Australians more than seven years ago — and the bubble burst. A slapped sweep off Dom Bess flew past short leg but not past square leg, where Joe Denly couldn’t help but take the catch.

Dean Elgar has a phrase for this sort of thing: a brain fart. The shock of what Du Plessis had done rippled electrically around the ground. In came someone the scoreboard introduced as “Hendrick van der Duss”, who can bat a bit, and at least Pieter Malan was still there, the South Africans in the crowd would have thought …

In the seventh over with the second new ball, which was taken when due by — surprisingly — Sam Curran, Malan misread the line of a Curran delivery the left-armer angled across him and Ben Stokes took a low catch at second slip. It was the 288th ball Malan had faced in a stay of more than six hours for his 84, and it was a decent nut. The debutant done good: he had to be got out.

Van der Dussen and Quinton de Kock took South Africa to tea with no further drama, and it was a sign of England’s rising anxiety to take the five remaining wickets that they set bristling fields — all available men, or all but one, in catching positions — in the final session. That paid off in the sixth over after tea, when De Kock, having compiled an exemplary half-century, lunged at a long hop from Denly and smashed it to short midwicket, where Zak Crawley leapt to hold a fine catch. It was another episode of mental flatulence, and it earned Denly — a country house level leg spinner who hadn’t taken a wicket from the 240 deliveries he had bowled going into this match — his second of the innings.

A moment after James Anderson was moved to leg gully, Van der Dussen blipped him a catch off Stuart Broad. Van der Dussen’s 140-ball 17, a labour of more than three hours, was an admirable effort. But its end was another brain fart.

At 237/7, England had taken such firm control of the match that Joe Root felt at home enough to gee up the Barmy Army from his position in the slip cordon. For the significantly fewer South Africa supporters, that was a sickening sight.

After Stokes removed Dwaine Pretorius and Anrich Nortjé with consecutive deliveries to take England within a wicket of victory, Kagiso Rabada and Vernon Philander — who had become embroiled in a verbal confrontation with Jos Buttler — couldn’t quite decide whether to take a run when Rabada punched the hattrick ball down the ground.

They recovered the sensibilities in time not to suffer the calamity of a runout, but the snapshot was a look into the heads of a team who didn’t seem sure of much anymore. Twenty-four balls later, with 50 deliveries left in the match, Philander failed to deal with a rising effort from Stokes and speared a catch to Ollie Pope in the cordon. Philander didn’t seem to believe what had happened, and stood for a long moment, apparently waiting for his fate to be undone. You could hardly blame the man: South Africa had lost half their wickets for 11 runs when all they had to do to secure a draw was bat out a session. That didn’t smell at all good.  

Ten days ago at Centurion, South Africa defied everything that has befallen the game in their country by beating England. They made the improbable not only possible but real, and hopes skyrocketed that after months of darkness the sun had at last come out. It was blazing again at Newlands on Tuesday, but it shone on England. Sometimes even the brightest dawns are false.

First published by Cricbuzz.

How to drive the fans to drink

“The game was on the edge. Who was going to crack first? We cracked first.” – Mark Boucher

TELFORD VICE at Newlands

LIFELONG teetotallers might be interested to know what a hangover feels like. If they’re cricket fans, watching Sunday’s play at Newlands is their answer. Except that the headache, the rough voice, the body ache, the unsteady hands and the dodgy balance didn’t disappear somewhere around lunchtime.

England batted grittily all day, none more than Dom Sibley. South Africa bowled grimly all day, although a fired up Anrich Nortjé might want to debate the point over a beer. But there’s no doubting that, for the most part, the cricket was as grey as the skies above.

Not that you could blame the English for making it so. On Saturday the South Africans batted under the influence of poorly executed bad ideas — and some fine bowling — and handed their opponents the advantage. As Mark Boucher said after stumps on Sunday, “The game was on the edge. Who was going to crack first? We cracked first.” Then England put a stopper in the bottle to trap their prey, grinding their lead to 264 while losing only four wickets. Sometime on Monday their bowlers will uncork a vintage that should prove good enough to level the series.

South Africa’s last chance saloon would be a sudden glug of wickets on Monday morning. On Sunday’s evidence, that is unlikely. And that without considering when the pitch will call final rounds on reliable bounce for batters in the fourth innings.

It’s difficult to blame the bowlers for the mess the batters made, but South Africa’s attack took to their task with more determination than delight on a pitch that had lost much of its original fizz.

“After the first two days I would have said we wouldn’t want to chase any more than 250, but it has flattened out,” Boucher said. “We believe we can get quick wickets, and if we’re chasing 330 or 340 …”

Nortjé, who did everyone a favour by ending Joe Denly’s unlovely 111-ball 31 before tea and ended the day’s play by dismissing nightwatch Dom Bess with a brush of his glove, would seem South Africa’s best chance of staying in the game.

“You’ve got to have a guy who’s keen to do it with the ball in his hand,” Boucher said of Nortjé, who proved his willingness on Friday, when a rearing delivery crashed into a glove at shoulder height on its way into Quinton de Kock’s gloves. A rattled Root didn’t wait for the umpire to confirm his fate.

In the unlikelihood of Root having forgotten how he had been removed, Nortjé was only too ready to remind him on Sunday. Immediately after England’s captain took guard again, Nortjé produced a short, sharp delivery. Root was forced to yank himself out of its path. But his composure was not for the taking this time, and he fast forwarded the game with a half-century worthy of his talent and skill.

Keshav Maharaj endured a day of near misses, his deliveries often squirting off the edge and in the air — and just out of reach of despairing hands. Dwaine Pretorius give it everything, and earned the prize scalp of Root nine balls before the close. But South Africa didn’t get the best out of Kagiso Rabada and Vernon Philander. Rabada toiled listlessly, and was reduced to roaring in frustration rather than happiness when he had Zak Crawley taken behind. Philander struggled to beat the bat anything like as frequently as in the first innings.  

And all the while Sibley laboured on, like a lone, hard-grafting bartender late at night in a crowded drinking den. Not all centuries are works of art, but that shouldn’t diminish them. Sibley has already earned his respect from the South Africans, which will only increase should he add the 15 runs he needs to score his first hundred.

How many in the crowd would have appreciated his effort is open to question. Before lunch one spectator was flopped in his seat, head lolling back in a deep sleep. Later, another fan was significantly more deeply engrossed in a book than the cricket. Before the close, the Barmy Army took to entertaining themselves with the help of their very own Charlie Chaplin impersonator.

It was that kind of day for many of the 14,659 in the ground on Sunday, not counting assorted extras like the press. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we could use a drink.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Feathers don’t fly on proper pitch

“It would have been an interesting one – play stopped because of a hadeda.” – Dwaine Pretorius on Jackson, the bird that spent the day roaming Newlands’ outfield.

BIRD, NOT WATCHING: Jackson the hadeda is at long-on. Photograph: Telford Vice

TELFORD VICE at Newlands

THE Buttler did it. Jos Buttler, that is. With a ball short of 21 overs left in the day’s play at Newlands on Friday, he pulled out of facing a delivery from Anrich Nortjé to ask for Jackson to be shooed out of his line of vision. Jackson the bird, that is.

Jackson is an ibis. Or, in South Africa, a hadeda. If you’re from anywhere in Africa south of the Sahara, you know its ilk: a jazzy ensemble of curves and angles the size of a large cat, blandly plumed except on its iridescent wings, and possessed of a cry that rips through the air like a razor. 

Not that Jackson had much to say, choosing instead to spend the day patrolling the outfield with its scimitar of a beak rooting about for worms and insects. It was at deepish extra cover when Vernon Philander chugged towards Zak Crawley with the first delivery of the second men’s Test, and after tea it had migrated 180 degrees to fine leg with the odd peregrination hither or thither in the hope of better pickings.

Quinton de Kock, Kagiso Rabada, Philander and Nortjé all had a go at persuading Jackson to wing its way elsewhere. But it paid their attempts little heed and seemed impervious to the racket raised by the full house of spectators all around. There were 15,090 in the ground by the end of the first session, at least 7,500 of them England fans. That’s a smidgen less than half of the crowd. Each of them seemed to have brought multiple St George’s flags and displayed them. South African flags were exponentially fewer in evidence. Faf du Plessis may want to revisit his assertion on Thursday that Newlands was “the new home of cricket”. Unless he meant a shared home. 

Jackson had wandered into different batters’ view of the bowler several times by the time Buttler held up a hand to halt Nortjé. Seventeen deliveries later Buttler hammered Keshav Maharaj down the ground for six, prompting Jackson to take flight for the first and only time before stumps. Briefly. Once the ball had whistled safely past, feathers were preened to their formerly unruffled splendour and the foraging resumed.

Jackson seems to know its cricket, never putting itself directly in the line of fire. A captain less assured than Du Plessis might have been able to use its instincts to help him set a field — don’t bother putting men wherever the bird goes; it knows what this batter is going to do with that bowler. “I’m just glad it didn’t get hit,” Dwaine Pretorius said after stumps. “It would have been an interesting one — play stopped because of a hadeda. I’m sure adidas would have been happy.” Hadeda … adidas … geddit?  

Jackson wouldn’t have got the joke, but you had the feeling Newlands was familiar territory for it. And that it had seen the Ihtishaam Adams’ pitches often enough to trust him not to prepare something that would have the batters ducking or the fielders diving. Adams, a qualified civil and electrical engineer, has been part of the team who tend this patch of turf since October 2012. But he has been the head groundskeeper only since July. So this is his first Test in charge, and if you think a player is nervous on debut what with the world — they assume — watching the first ball they face or bowl, consider how much more true that must be for the creator of the central character in any cricket match. Unlike dismissed batters or bowlers hit out of the attack, there is nowhere for a poor pitch to hide. It is on parade for the duration of the match, and is often more talked about than the feats wrought on it.  

So well done, Mr Adams. After too many Tests in South Africa in which the balance has been tilted outrageously far in favour of fast bowlers, this is a proper pitch worthy of the occasion. It doesn’t look much like a South African pitch — yellow and balding, like Homer Simpson’s head — but it has restored the faith of cricket watchers who had grown bored with seeing batters sweat and swat and swear under their breath at the unfairness of it all. Like Du Plessis said on Thursday, good pitches will help rebuild batters’ confidence.

The morning offered the seamers movement off the seam, especially at the Kelvin Grove End, but the pace of the pitch prompted Du Plessis to call on Maharaj as early as the 14th over. He bowled the last ball of the first session, which pitched on middle and ragged past Joe Denly’s off-stump as if it had indeed hit Jackson on the way.

Pretorius summed up South Africa’s attack as “two guys who can bowl 150 [kilometres an hour] and the others are really accurate”. What with Rabada and Nortjé bringing the heat, Pretorius was among the accurate. Their ranks were led by Philander, who swung the first delivery with the second new ball away just enough to find Dom Bess outside edge and have him caught behind. The master of medium pace has made things look easy his whole career. Still, there was nothing wrong with Pretorius’ point that “it was hard work getting wickets”. It was. But Pretorius put in that hard work in 11 overs that cost only 26 runs. He was rewarded with the wickets of Buttler and Sam Curran. And that with the ball 75 and then 79 overs old. Even then, there must have been signs of a smidgen of life. Why else would Curran have shouldered arms to a ball that he clearly thought was going to seam away — only to hear the horror clatter behind him after the delivery held its line and did no such thing.

Had Jackson seen that, instead of being beak down in search of slithering snacks, it might have let out a raucous ring of approval.

First published by Cricbuzz.