Perth – Bulletproof Truth

Perth puzzle puts SA on top

Ngidi’s intelligence, Markram’s wits, Miller’s cussedness earn victory over India.

Telford Vice / Sydney

THAT this was going to be a rare gem of a T20I was apparent from the opening over, which was scoreless for the first time in the 27 matches that have started in this tournament. Wayne Parnell bowled that over with skill and verve, twice beating KL Rahul.

Another three dot balls were delivered, by Kagiso Rabada, before Rohit Sharma launched a short delivery over fine leg for six. Never in their 188 matches in the format had India needed as many as 10 balls to get off the mark.

That, mind, by one of only two teams who had reached 200 at this World Cup. The other side to have done so were their opponents, who had lost their top order before the end of their powerplay.

Some of the above can be explained by the conditions, which would have reminded those who are old enough of the glory days of pace and bounce at the WACA across the Swan River. Bowlers have been unusually competitive at this World Cup, and never more so than in this match.

In the brilliance of the floodlights at the shiny bright new Perth Stadium, South Africa’s attack fired the ball in short, fast and furious. Lungi Ngidi’s intelligence, as much as his skill and physicality, earned him a haul of 4/29. Parnell kept his discipline with steely focus to take 3/15. The Indians settled on a fuller length, and found swing. Arshdeep Singh used it masterfully to claim 2/25, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammed Shami went for less than a run a ball.

So Virat Kohli being dismissed for the first time in his three innings in the tournament, when he was hurried into a pull and bounced out for 12 by Ngidi with the help of a fine running catch in the deep by Rabada, could be rationalised. But not Kohli’s feeble fumbling at deep midwicket in spilling the catch that should have removed Aiden Markram for 35. The bowler, R Ashwin, was incredulous with shock and something like rage.

Markram had moved on to 48 when he hoisted Arshdeep Singh towards the fine leg boundary. Kohli and Hardik Pandya converged on where the ball would fall — and then peeled off in opposite directions to allow it to plop to earth.

Kohli is the most cocksure cricketer on the planet. What kind of game do we have on our hands when he is reduced to hapless slapstick? Or when Suryakumar Yadav and Rohit botch clear runout chances? Or when Rohit looks like he wants to punch a wall whenever the television cameras pan to him?

The kind in which India’s total of 133/9 proved almost enough. South Africa surpassed it with just two balls remaining thanks to Markram’s 52 and David Miller’s unbeaten 59, and their stand of 76 off 60 that started at 24/3. And the kind in which the best innings in what is supposed to be a batter’s format of the game was played by a member of the losing team. Suryakumar Yadav’s 40-ball 68 shimmered with confidence and poise, and made batting look simple when it was not.

It was also the kind of game in which the gnarly attitude brought to the crease by Markram and Miller mattered more than anything else. Markram survived and prospered on not a lot more than his wits. Miller leaned heavily on the experience of playing under pressure that he has gained in 288 franchise and provincial T20 matches.

Markram’s dismissal in the 16th, when he pulled Pandya to deep midwicket, came with 34 needed off 26. Miller’s cussedness showed again in a stand with Tristan Stubbs in which each faced six balls but Miller owned 16 of the 22 runs realised. He took South Africa home with consecutive boundaries off Bhuvneshwar, the first barely gloved, the second crashed through the covers.

That prompted the oddest sight on an already strange night. Having clinched victory in a tense contest against one of the tournament’s titans to put their team on top of the Group 2 standings in terms of points as well as net runrate, Miller and Parnell — who faced two balls in the last partnership — met in the middle of the pitch.

Nothing odd about that, but there was no wild whooping of the sort we saw when Rilee Rossouw and Glenn Phillips scored their centuries last week. Fists were not pumped, or even bumped. Smiles were hardly smiled. Miller and Parnell embraced, but not emphatically. It was a tender moment between two people who had got the job done. And who probably knew they might have a few more to do in the coming weeks.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Slick England down exciting, erring Afghanistan

“We need to get better at playing a full 40 overs.” – Jonathan Trott, Afghanistan coach

Telford Vice / Perth Stadium

THE arc the ball took before clattering into one of the 60,000 plastic seats at Perth Stadium on Saturday shouldn’t be likened to the path a missile follows to make its terrible mark. Because the language of war has no place in sport at the best of times, and particularly not when Afghans are playing.

But a freshly unleashed missile is what sprang to mind when, with scandalous nonchalance, Rahmanullah Gurbaz eased onto one knee to flick Chris Woakes over his shoulder for six. What had been the ninth delivery of the match flew flat and furious into the stands, carving a cordite path through the spring evening air. Happily the seat that served as a target was, like most in the vast cauldron, unoccupied.

The stroke was cheered heartily by the largely Afghanistan-supporting crowd, among them two women who held the national flag between them as they jumped for joy, their long, dark hair and wide smiles bouncing unfettered and uncovered in floodlit lustre. Their faces mirrored the freedom Gurbaz had unfurled to play his audacious shot.

It seemed the electronic scoreboards, each of them 340 square metres big, refused to believe what had happened. Until two overs into the match they were still stuck on zero and claiming not a ball had been bowled. And deliveries were indeed being bowled — rapidly, what with Mark Wood quickly surging to and sometimes beyond 150 kilometres an hour.

The Afghans never flinched in their first T20I in Australia, where they have played three ODIs. Maybe they lacked finesse as they threw their hands, bats and hearts at the ball with no thought of safety first, or maybe they really weren’t considering the consequences of getting it wrong. Either way, it was thrilling to watch such unafraid batting. It would be too far a reach and too glib to wonder whether living in Afghanistan’s real world puts mere cricket into perspective, but doubtless that will be wondered regardless.

Had they not been up against a team as slick as England, who can say how much closer the match might have been. Knowing the batters would chase whatever they served up, England’s attack kept their efforts short and wide enough to exploit the catches waiting to be taken in the region of the cavernous square boundaries. Sam Curran laced rising deliveries with yorkers to claim 5/10 — three of them in four deliveries — and became the first Englishman to earn a five-wicket haul in the format at this level.

Asked if he had found an extra dash of pace, Curran smiled and said, “Maybe it’s just a bit of alignment stuff, but maybe it’s Australia and they like to crank up the speed guns. It’s my first time playing here, and I’m really enjoying the bounce and pace, and you can use the dimensions of the ground.”

Liam Livingstone, Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid made fiendishly difficult outfield catches look straightforward, and Jos Buttler flew metres down the leg side to latch onto another. After all that, when Alex Hales, at backward point, dived but dropped Fareed Ahmad off Woakes, it looked like a clumsy mistake and not the fine bit of fielding it was. “When ‘Livvy’ took that catch it set the standard — we knew we were here to scrap for every run in the field,” Curran said.

This key difference between the teams was first illustrated in the fifth over of England’s reply, when Hales hammered Fazalhaq Farooqi to backward point — where Qais Ahmad couldn’t hold a hard-hit chance that an England fielder probably would have clung to, considering what had gone before on the night. Three overs later Mohammad Nabi came roaring around the boundary from long-off but spilled another opportunity, this one earned by Mujeeb Ur Rahman, to dismiss Hales. Nabi redeemed himself at short cover in the 14th, when he held Dawid Malan’s smashed drive off Mujeeb. Normal service resumed two balls later, when Livingston cover drove Fareed for four through a dozing Rashid Khan.

Afghanistan’s innings ended in a frenzy of five wickets crashing for three runs across a dozen deliveries. “We need to get better at playing a full 40 overs,” their coach, Jonathan Trott, said. “There’re times when we play 32 to 33 overs well, and then we let the opposition take the game away or we put ourselves in a position where we really have to chase the game.”

The Afghans have been bowled out only four times in the 64 T20Is in which they have batted first, and although their 112 was their highest total in those terms it was never going to be enough to hold ambitious England. They sealed their first win of the tournament with five wickets standing, 11 balls to spare, and a net runrate of 0.620.

If there was something to quibble with about England’s performance, it was that they took too long to dispense with the small target. “We knew it would be a tricky chase and that we had to respect the Afghanistan bowlers, but we won and that’s the most important thing,” Curran said.

Immediately ahead of England are two games at the MCG — against Ireland on Wednesday and Australia, who were bossed by New Zealand by 89 runs at the SCG on Saturday, on Friday. “[Ireland are] a dangerous team with some matchwinners,” Curran said. “We’ll focus on them but there’s no hiding that Friday’s going to be an epic game. Hopefully we can go into that game having won on Wednesday. It would be great for us and it might put the Aussies in a tricky position.

England’s display on Saturday, especially in the field and with the ball, befitted Australia’s newest international cricket venue, a place sleek with ruthlessly clean design, strewn with tasteful art, unsullied by pylons — the lights ring the inner edge of the stadium roof — and so close to the Swan River you fancy a six could come back soggy. At least, it could if the surrounding stands didn’t tower quite so high or so steep.

Across the river in the dark, it’s monstrously squat towers stubbing into the sky like six middle fingers, the WACA broods still, no longer used at this level but loved by those who remember how bowlers used to rule there. People used to talk about missiles then, too. But the targets were batters’ bodies and heads.

Times change. Venues change. But not the fact that batting like Afghanistan did on Saturday, as watchable as it always will be, doesn’t win matches. And that cool competency, as demonstrated by England, does.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Many degrees – and dollars – of separation between cricket’s haves and have-nots

“Individual countries forget that it’s supposed to be a world game. Are they just worrying about their own interests?” – Ryan Campbell, Netherlands coach

Telford Vice | Cape Town

CENTURION is a long way from the ocean. So what was the turquoise water lapping at golden sand, crowned by a grand pavilion, that filled the screen behind Ryan Campbell during an online press conference on Tuesday?

“That’s my hometown of Perth; it’s Cottesloe Beach,” Campbell said. “When you’re living in the Netherlands and you’re freezing and you’re a Perth boy and craving the heat, sometimes you need reminders of home.”

Campbell was appointed the Netherlands men’s team’s head coach in January 2017. That’s why he is in Centurion — where the Dutch will start a series of three ODIs against South Africa on Friday.

The idyllic seaside image, which bore no resemblance to the Highveld’s standard landscape of boxy buildings, busy highways and toxic mine dumps, nor to Amsterdam’s cloudy skies and quaint canals, served as an apt reminder of the unreality of the relationship between international cricket’s major entities and other countries where the game has a lower profile.

Campbell admitted he never gave much thought to the latter, in a cricket sense, for most of a senior career that stretched from February 1996 to March 2016: “I had no idea about what goes on in associate cricket. But I was drafted to go up to Hong Kong, and that was my first long hard look at associate cricket and the rigours you’ve got to go through. Mostly unpaid, those players put in so much time and energy.”

Campbell, 49, was a hard-hitting batter and wicketkeeper who played 92 first-class matches for Western Australia and five for Australia A, along with 79 and 24 list A games for those teams. And five ODIs: two for Australia and, by dint of his Chinese grandmother, three for Hong Kong. That changed his perspective.

“It gets under my skin that the top cricket teams of the world … I’m trying not to get political here, but we can come out and say we want to be the most participated in sport in the world, and go on and blah, blah, blah. But if you’re not giving opportunities to the best associate teams or teams lower down the scale to improve and go up against the big 10, it’s very frustrating.

“I get the feeling individual countries forget that it’s supposed to be a world game. I think it was Donald Bradman who said we’re supposed to leave the game in a better position than it was when we found it. I would ask that question of all the big teams. Are they doing that, or are they just worrying about their own individual backyards and interests?”

In June 2017 the ICC board decided to give their associate members US$240-million — to be shared — during the 2016 to 2023 rights cycle, or US$40-million less than they had agreed that April. The full members would receive US$1.536-billion, US$405-million of it going to the BCCI alone. That meant India would get 347 times the amount paid to each of the associates.

“England and India and Australia wanted more, and that came out of the associate pool,” Campbell said. “Within weeks they were announcing new billion-dollar TV rights deals. That’s the world game as we speak. Hopefully some of the big countries understand that the growth isn’t going to come from the big countries. It’s going to come from all the ones underneath, and they need to get in and help.”

Further evidence of the myopia of the more powerful countries came last week, when it was announced that the Super League — which will decide the seven teams besides hosts India who will qualify directly for the 2023 ODI World Cup — was to be abolished. For the 2027 edition of the tournament, the top 10 sides in the ICC rankings at a predetermined point will book their spots. Four more teams will earn places in a qualifying event.

“The scrapping of the Super League after 2023 is really disappointing for all associate countries, but that’s the decision that has been made,” Campbell said, and explained why the system had given cricket’s smaller countries hope — and why its demise raised concerns.

“This year, the Super League brought us, for the first time in the history of Dutch cricket, cricket shown live on Dutch TV [when the Netherlands hosted Ireland in June]. We’re trying to inspire the next generation. We know that great footballers and hockey players come from the Netherlands, but we want cricket players to as well.

“I think every associate country is wondering what’s next. How do we play? Where do we get our fixtures? Is World Cricket League 2 [which is part of the qualifying process for the 2023 ODI World Cup] going to stay in place? How do you get to a ranking where you can compete for a spot in the 2027 World Cup?”

Between the end of the 2019 ODI World Cup and the start of this year’s T20I version, the Netherlands played 30 white-ball internationals. Among the 19 other sides who featured in both formats during that period, 14 were on the field more often than the Dutch — none more so than West Indies, who played 58 games. Of the five teams who had fewer matches than Campbell’s men, New Zealand were the only ICC full member: they played 19 white-ball games. But they also had 16 Tests to keep them busy. The other four sides spotted less than the Netherlands in that time were the United States, Papua New Guinea, the United Arab Emirates — and Namibia, who became the darlings of the group stage of the T20I World Cup by beating Ireland and the Dutch, who also lost to Sri Lanka and the Irish and were eliminated.

Cricket is even more impoverished in Namibia, a country consisting mostly of desert in which there are only five clubs, than the Netherlands. But the Namibians overcame those obstacles to make names for themselves. Clearly, success is more complex than mounting up matches and money.

Campbell’s reference to Bradman’s sentiment about the custodial responsibilities of the game’s incumbent generation couldn’t be found, but the Don did say this: “May cricket continue to flourish and spread its wings. The world can only be richer for it.” And this: “The game of cricket existed long before I was born. It will be played centuries after my demise.” And, in the wake of the 2000 fixing saga starring Hansie Cronjé, this: “Despite recent sad developments cricket will survive and remain the noblest game, and I shall be proud to be a part of its history and development.”

That was not long before he died on February 25, 2001: more than three years before the England and New Zealand women’s teams played the first T20I, and more than seven years before the IPL saw the neon light of day/night. Since Bradman’s death, 904 Tests have been played by men alone, along with 2,643 ODIs and 1,447 T20Is. And 31 Tests, 868 ODIs and 1,004 T20Is by women.

Many of those games would have involved teams he would never have dreamt of playing against. You wonder what he might say about the game now, and whether he would think — all things considered — that he and his contemporaries left cricket in a better state than it was when it found them.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Dale Steyn: Extraordinary representing the ordinary

Steyn had no business selling speed, nevermind becoming the best speed merchant of his generation.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

THAT wasn’t him, was it? It was. Not many who were out and about late on that summer Friday night recognised him as they went from restaurants to bars to who knows where else. But that really was him. On a downtown corner in Perth as the dregs of time drained out of November 4, 2016 stood Dale Steyn.

For someone who had, hours earlier, not only broken different bones in the same shoulder for the second time in 13 months but also ripped muscles in his chest, arm and back, he looked in rudely good health. He was well enough to engage in a few minutes of smalltalk with a couple of bypassing South African reporters. All that hinted that something was wrong was the sling that cradled his right arm across his chest. And his eyes, which were unnervingly soft with uncertainty. For years batters have looked into Steyn’s eyes and frozen with fear. To look at his eyes that night was to see the fear returned to sender.

Steyn wasn’t born a champion fast bowler. Instead he was an apparently regular bloke — in many senses — who was able to bowl outrageously fast, and with verve and swerve and great skill and aggression to boot. That night in Perth he was surely confronted by the truth that, after so many years of strong suggestions to the contrary, he was as mortal as the next guy. More so, in fact: the next guy doesn’t hurtle in and bowl with all his might for ball after ball, over after over, spell after spell, day after day, match after match, series after series, and season after season. It isn’t part of the next guy’s job to wake up in a world of hurt. Perhaps, that night, Steyn allowed himself to imagine waking up, someday sooner rather than later, free of pain.

He made his debut in December 2004 and, in just more than a dozen years before he suffered his first shoulder injury — bowling against England at Kingsmead in December 2015 — he played in 82 of South Africa’s 105 Tests. That’s a shade under 80%. From then until he retired from the format in August 2019, he would be involved in only 11 of the 35 Tests South Africa played — fewer than a third.

From the start of Steyn’s career until South Africa’s tour to India in November 2015, nothing beyond the blood-in-the-boots bowlers’ ailments befell him. Then everything did, in escalating succession. Or enough, and quickly enough, to make him rethink the career suicide of bowling fast for a living. A significant groin injury in India was followed by the two shattered shoulders and, against India at Newlands in January 2018, a heel injury that tore the tendon clean off the bone.

Maybe this was always going to happen. Steyn had no business selling speed, nevermind becoming the best speed merchant of his generation. With less than six feet of height at his disposal and a body to match, he didn’t have a lot going for him in sheer physicality. He wasn’t even Allan Donald, nevermind Joel Garner. That didn’t disqualify him — he is a centimetre shorter than Malcolm Marshall and four taller than Robin Jackman — but it only added to the challenge of trying to rise above bowlers like Morné Morkel, his best mate in cricket.

From the start of his representative career, for Northerns under-15s in December 1998, to the end — for the PSL’s Quetta Gladiators in March — Steyn bowled 42 909 deliveries. And that’s just in matches. He asked his body for a whole lot more in training. Something had to give. When it did, a cruel crescendo of calamities quickly rose. No more will follow.

On Tuesday Steyn called time on his playing career. All of it. He signed off, on social media, with lines from “A Long December”, a song by his favourite band, Counting Crows: “And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe/Maybe this year will be better than the last/I can’t remember all the times I tried to tell my myself/To hold on to these moments as they pass.”

So much for the glass half-empty. Because Steyn’s story is, mainly, of triumph. Plenty has and no doubt will be written about his crazy eyes, his gallery of tattoos and his chainsaw celebrations. But when you look past the special effects you see a fast bowler’s fast bowler. His ability to make the ball sing with swing, and at pace, was unrivalled. He fetched his bouncer from the top of a tower of terror, his yorker from the depths of a swamp strewn with skewing serpents. And he did it all with style, presence, and elegance. In a tour match against Zimbabwe in Paarl in December 2017, he took no wickets for 16 runs in 12 overs. But nonetheless Vincent Barnes, South Africa’s long-time bowling coach, couldn’t stop himself from videoing Steyn for his own edification. “I never get tired of watching that action,” Barnes said with a schoolboy’s enthusiasm.

No-one has taken more Test wickets for South Africa, but let others analyse his statistics and place him in the pantheon. That matters less than the widely felt belief that he didn’t represent South Africa as much as he was the standard bearer for ordinary humans who dreamed of doing extraordinary things. Steyn’s humanity was with him at Eden Park on March 24, 2015 when Grant Elliott sent what became the last ball of the World Cup semi-final screaming into Auckland’s night sky for six. The confirmation of defeat poleaxed Steyn, who had to be peeled off the pitch by Elliott. The scene was straight out of the real world situation of your buddy helping you stand up after one too many beers.

Steyn’s humanity went everywhere with him; from delightfully sweary press conferences, to hunting and gathering junk food long after team curfew, to testy interactions with reporters.

“Perhaps I’m just not good enough,” he rasped at the WACA in November 2012 when he was asked where all the wickets had gone: he had taken a combined 5/258 at the Gabba and in Adelaide in that series. “Tomorrow it will say in the paper that we won this game regardless,” was his ice cold retort to the charge that South Africa’s victory over Sri Lanka in Galle in July 2014 had been tainted by Vernon Philander’s conviction for ball-tampering during the match, in which Steyn had taken 9/99. Once, on Twitter, he railed at a journalist: “You used to be a reporter. Now you’re just a hater. Fuck off. Blocked.” That reporter remains blocked by Steyn, who has since granted him several insightful interviews, all of them conducted with genuine, mutual warmth. No-one, in this reporter’s experience, has been more enjoyable to write about.

That’s what you get with Steyn — everything. The bouncers, yorkers, outswingers, inswingers, tattoos, mad eyes, chainsaw celebrations, colourful petulance, press conferences that venture far beyond the usual clichés, and conversations that are more than interviews.

Steyn was not made for cricket, but cricket was made for Steyn. That was enough to give us his greatness.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Prince fires BLM broadside

“Any form of transformation has been met with resistance.” – Ashwell Prince

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

ASHWELL Prince claims South Africa’s team leadership brushed aside reports of spectator racism during a tour to Australia. Contemporary reports say otherwise, but other parts of Prince’s social media broadside will fuel a fire that has burned steadily brighter with arguments by current and former South African players for and against supporting the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

Prince, who played 66 Tests and 52 ODIs from February 2002 to December 2011, tweeted on Friday: “[In] Australia [in] 2005 a number of us encountered racist incidents on the boundary. When we brought this to the attention of the leadership at lunch we were told, ‘Ah, it’s only some people in the crowd, not the majority. Let’s get back out there.’”

Graeme Smith captained that team and Mickey Arthur was the coach. The black and brown players in the squad were Makhaya Ntini, Prince, Herschelle Gibbs, Garnett Kruger and Charl Langeveldt.

Contacted in Colombo on Friday, Arthur, now Sri Lanka’s coach, recalled an incident during the first Test in Perth when Ntini reported abuse after fielding near the boundary, as did Kruger, who was targetted when he carried drinks to his teammates.

South Africa’s management complained to match referee Chris Broad, and Cricket Australia arranged for additional security on the boundary. Arthur said the entire team were disturbed by the episode, and denied that it had been taken lightly.

A report at the time in the Melbourne Age said, “The incident prompted the ICC to reiterate its zero tolerance stance against racism. CA vowed that the policy would be enforced and spectators ejected should such behaviour be repeated at the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne or the third Test in Sydney.”

The article said Prince, Shaun Pollock and Justin Kemp were among the players who objected to the abuse, which included the word “kaffir” — the most serious racist slur used by white South Africans, many of whom have moved to Perth. Ntini was quoted as saying it was “absolutely uncalled for” and “unbearable”, and that, “As a South African we are united now; we are singing one song and we play sport with one heart.”

That has never been the case, according to Prince’s thread of 10 hard-hitting tweets on Friday. He painted a picture of a country struggling to escape the grip of white supremacy, which has also tainted cricket. “The system is broken and has been for some time, both in society and in sport,” Prince wrote.

South Africa’s tour of India in November 1991 ended 21 years of their isolation from world cricket because of apartheid. But the team that took the field in the three ODIs was as white as those that purported to represent the country when it was illegal for blacks and whites to play sport together.

“And so ever since day one this narrative [that blacks don’t play cricket] had to be driven and protected, and any form of transformation has been met with resistance,” Prince wrote. “Real, authentic change, inclusivity, non-racialism has never been able to establish itself.”

On Monday, Lungi Ngidi expressed his support for BLM only to be slammed by white former players. Cricket South Africa at first hesitated to share Ngidi’s stance unequivocally, only doing so on Thursday after the explosive difference of opinion between the fast bowler and the former players had been widely reported.

In a release on Friday the South African Cricketers’ Association came out in strong support of Ngidi, with chief executive Andrew Breetzke quoted as saying, “Freedom of expression is an enabling right that all South Africans support. We must, therefore, respect Lungi, as a sporting role model, when he exercises his freedom of expression on the important matter of racial discrimination. To subject him to unfair criticism is to undermine his right.”

Push will come to shove on July 18, when the Solidarity Cup in Centurion will herald cricket’s first appearance in South Africa since the start of the coronavirus lockdown in March. Prominent messaging in favour of BLM will be expected by many, but dreaded by others. For still others, the time for mere gestures is long gone.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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