Rawalpindi – Bulletproof Truth

Batting experience separates South Africa, Australia

“The conditions will dictate how you need to play in Test cricket. It’s five days and it’s supposed to be a fair battle between bat and ball.” – Rassie van der Dussen

Telford Vice / Cape Town

SOUTH Africa will take more than four times as much first-class batting experience, compared to Test experience, into their series that starts at the Gabba next Saturday. Australia’s differential in those terms is less than two.

The eight recognised batters in the visitors’ squad have 1,668 first-class innings between them. Australia have yet to name a squad, but the eight batters in their dressing room for the current series against West Indies had had a combined 1,669 first-class innings going into the second Test in Adelaide.

That one degree of difference is where the similarities end. The South Africans have had 314 Test innings, or a touch more than half the Australians’ 583. Subtract the South Africans’ Test innings from their total and divide that by their number of Test innings and you arrive at 4.3. Do the same with the Aussies and the answer is 1.9. You could say Australia are more than twice as prepared for the rubber than their opponents.

Rassie van der Dussen wouldn’t agree. “The batters in the [South Africa] squad are resilient,” he told reporters from Brisbane on Thursday. “They’re guys who know their game, who’ve been around the block in first-class cricket. The key is going to be to transfer that to Test level.

“A lot of the guys have Test experience, a few of them one or two Tests. But they’ve had that taste and they’ve felt the intensity of Test cricket and playing away against world class teams. It’s going to be about transferring the skills we’ve built up over the last 10 to 15 years to draw on our first-class experience.”

Van der Dussen is a case in point. He had been a first-class player for more than 11 years, during which he had earned 113 caps, when he made his Test debut against England in Centurion in December 2019. He has had 232 first-class innings, 30 of them in Tests.

Khaya Zondo is the most patient batter in South Africa’s squad. He played 132 first-class games before he featured in a Test. Sarel Erwee waited 96 matches to crack the nod, Dean Elgar 74, Temba Bavuma 68, Heinrich Klaasen 67, Kyle Verreynne 46 and Theunis de Bruyn 36. But only Elgar and Bavuma have batted at least 50 times in Tests. Among the Australians, David Warner, Steve Smith, Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne have all reached that milestone.

Australians grow up on pitches that promise a fair contest between bat and ball. In South Africa, too many surfaces sizzle with seam movement. Since the first post-readmission Test, in Bridgetown in April 1992, the average runs per wicket at grounds that have hosted at least 20 matches has been higher than 30 at the SCG, the Gabba, Adelaide Oval, the WACA and the MCG. In South Africa, that’s true only at Newlands and Centurion. Consequently South Africa’s batting average is higher in Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand and West Indies than it is at home.

Their batters can hardly be said to have the advantage when they play in South Africa, unless we count the hard won knowledge that batting at home is more difficult than in other countries. On top of that, conditions in their series in India, New Zealand and England in the past three years have been less than ideal for scoring runs or, sometimes, even for occupying the crease. South Africa have played nine series in that time, and only in Pakistan last January and February and West Indies last June did they get sound batting pitches.

“People have been critical of our batting unit but the conditions that we’ve batted in have been really tough,” Van der Dussen said. “The numbers tell that story. Our guys are averaging in the 30s and other countries’ guys are averaging in the 50s and 60s.” He warned against “comparing without taking conditions into consideration”.

Measured from South Africa’s series in India in October 2019 to before the current Adelaide Test, and among players who have had at least 10 matches, Labuschagne is world cricket’s highest averaging batter at 70.72. Warner and Smith are also in the top 15. The leading eight’s averages are more than 50. You need to go all the way down to 25th spot to find the most successful South African: Elgar at 38.97. South Africa’s batters have scored seven centuries, the Australians’ 19 — despite playing two fewer Tests than the South Africans. Labuschagne made 10 on his own, and added another in Adelaide on Thursday.

“We definitely want to get more hundreds and more partnerships, and score a lot more runs individually,” Van der Dussen said. “But if we can bat as a unit and get our team across the line, that’s the most important thing.”

Starting with that rubber in India three Octobers ago, South Africa have won four of their nine series and drawn another, and are second in the WTC standings, which, Van der Dussen said, “tells you the cricket we’ve been playing has been sufficient to get us there”.

But it’s not the way England have batted since Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes sparked their Bazball revolution in May. England have won seven of their eight Tests under their new coach and captain — their only loss was inflicted by South Africa in wildly seaming conditions at Lord’s in August — by scoring faster than every other team: 4.77 to the over. They raised that bar to 6.50 and 7.36 in Rawalpindi in the past few days, where they beat Pakistan by 74 runs shortly before bad light would have ended the match.

Might other teams follow that lead? “If there’s ever a place to play like that it’s probably Pakistan,” Van der Dussen said. “You’re going to follow up with a question of why didn’t we play like that when we were there [when South Africa’s highest total was 274 and Pakistan won both Tests]. But if you look at the English side, they’ve been very vocal about how they’re going to bat like that even through a few failures. They’re out of the WTC, so it was almost as if they had nothing to lose.

“They tried it against us and it didn’t really work. We lost the series [2-1] but we won the first game and in Manchester we were in the game for a good part of the match. It can work if the conditions are really docile, like they were in Pakistan. As soon as the bowlers are more into it — like we saw at Lord’s — it’s a very fine line between playing aggressively and getting out, as opposed to playing with more discipline.

“The conditions will dictate how you need to play in Test cricket. It’s five days and it’s supposed to be a fair battle between bat and ball. We’re coming up against a world class attack now and we have a world class attack ourselves, so the batters are going to have their work cut out in the series.

“That’s where the quality batters will come to the fore, the guys who are disciplined in the fourth-stump channel, who can judge the length, who can play the short ball that comes up to head height; not just shoulder height.

“There needs to be some sort of risk involved in batting, but [the Rawalpindi surface is] not a fair comparison of how Test pitches should be. The Pakistanis said that’s not the type of pitch they want to prepare. People probably like seeing that; a lot of shots and a lot of runs. But the purest and the real Test fans like it when the balance between bat and ball is even and the bowlers are in the game as much as the batters.”

Paul Farbrace, who was on England’s coaching staff from April 2014 to February 2019, would take issue with that. In an interview with the BBC on Thursday, he managed to flatly deny Bazball’s existence as well as explain that it was about more than scoring quickly: “There is no such thing as Bazball. Basically, England are playing fearless cricket. The declaration [by Stokes in Rawalpindi, where Pakistan were set a target of 343 in four sessions], you would never have had that even three years ago. In my time working with England, we would never have declared in that way.

“The way that they are prepared to lose games to win games is fantastic to watch. We all talk about pressure in sport, but it’s pressure in our own heads. And what Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes are saying is forget it.”

Farbrace admitted that was easier said than done, but made the point that Stokes was indeed practising what he preached. Stokes’ 60th first-class match was also the first of his 87 Tests. It is indisputable that experience is invaluable. But, without confidence and belief, having played a pile of matches is more about making memories than it is about making history. Stokes is teaching the game the difference. Whether they think the lesson is worth learning is another matter.

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The young man and the sea

“If players know they have 10 bubbles, they could do them. But is it 10 bubbles? Is it two? Is it 40? We don’t know.” – sports psychologist Kirsten van Heerden on bubble life.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

HAPPINESS wears blue shorts. The eyes and the smile are soft. The hands hold, with care and respect, a stout yellow-belly rockcod as long as an arm. Beyond the boat a vastness of slightly ruffled, air force blue water stretches wide beneath a sky slung low with pearly clouds. In the distance a long, dark blade of land stabs the scene.

It could be the moment before the fish is returned to the ocean with amazing grace. Once found but now lost in its own freedom. Until next time. What happened before and after this instant is not recorded. But we know that the man in blue shorts standing in a boat and holding up a fish in a photograph posted on social media looks happy. And that he is Quinton de Kock.

“Can’t wait to get back on the water again!” De Kock’s caption didn’t stand out. What did was the date of his post: February 2; three days after the Karachi Test and two days before the second match of the series in Rawalpindi. The picture must have been taken some time earlier in Knysna, the quiet seaside resort on South Africa’s southern coast where De Kock lives, before he left for Pakistan. Was South Africa’s captain honestly longing to go fishing in the middle of his team’s most important series this season, and in the wake of a defeat that should have rung several alarm bells loudly?

It’s easy to leap to that question, more difficult to fathom how De Kock reached that point. Part of the answer is contained in how he has looked and sounded since the start of cricket’s bio-bubble bubble era: like the epitome of a lost cause in need of a patron saint. De Kock’s unvarnished humanity means nothing gets in the way of his instincts on the field. But it also means he struggles to hide how he feels. In the same way that a fish is a dazzling acrobat in water but, on land, in even the most caring hands, reduced to futile wriggling and gasping, De Kock’s slickness at the crease evaporates when he is sat behind a microphone looking into a camera beyond which lurks the press. What you get instead is that most precious of things: breathless honesty.

Here’s De Kock at the Wanderers on January 5, the day South Africa beat Sri Lanka with two days to spare to complete a 2-0 thumping: “Lots of small things get into your mind; things that you’re not used to in life. One day we could living kind of normally and the next you’re in lockdown. Where do we go from there? We’re stuck in a bubble, and we could be stuck in a lockdown in some place for a certain period of time, which is the worst case scenario. It’s very unsettling. I don’t know how long it can last for.”

And here he is on January 18 in Karachi, eight days before the start of that series: “Eventually [bubble life] will catch up with some players, from an emotional and mental side. You’re trying to keep yourself mentally stable and perform for your country at once. There’s only so much of that you can carry on with. But you carry on because people back home want to watch good cricket and want to watch you perform. I’ve only been home for a maximum of three weeks over the last five, six months. It’s been tough but I’m soldiering on. Going forward, two weeks quarantine is almost out of the picture because we play so much cricket.”

The context of those two online press conferences couldn’t have been more different. In the first, De Kock was a triumphant captain. In the second, he was looking forward to playing in Pakistan, a challenge no South Africa team had faced since 2007. So why, both times, was he a husk, empty of enthusiasm and parched of passion? Maybe because he had been in one bio-bubble or another, barring short intervals, since the first week of September. The bubble was an invincible opponent.

De Kock’s bio-secure blues started with arrangements for the IPL. Then came the home white-ball series against England in September and the Sri Lanka Tests in December and January. That done, it was off to Pakistan. In April, Pakistan will be in South Africa to play seven white-ball games. Another series, another bubble. South Africans still fuming about Australia’s late withdrawal from next month’s Test series over Covid fears will have to forgive De Kock if he doesn’t feel the same way — that’s one way to avoid quarantine and a bubble.

De Kock has been afforded another way. The franchise T20 competition at Kingsmead started on Friday. He is not involved, and his absence is conspicuous because South Africa’s other top players are in action. The South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) revealed that De Kock is being given a break for mental health reasons. The bubble finally burst for him after the Test series in Pakistan. His parting shot to his teammates was that he would be offline and that they wouldn’t be able to find him. Last week he posted another picture: him holding a garrick of at least a metre long; the biggest of the species he has yet caught. The eyes and the smile were soft. It didn’t take a sports psychologist to see the happiness was back.

Kirsten van Heerden, who was an international swimmer for 13 years and represented South Africa at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, is indeed a sports psychologist. She’s also a player development manager with SACA, and while she doesn’t work directly with De Kock she is plugged into the challenges all players face because of the pandemic. “Often you’ll hear players say that on tours they see, pretty much, their hotel room and the cricket field,” she said. “But it’s the choice that you can go out if you want to that has been taken away. Now you can’t. That loss of control can be very difficult for players.”

Van Heerden said players can’t police what evades the Netflix firewall and leaks into their consciousness unbidden: “They’ve been given a lot more time to think and over-think, which most athletes do anyway. You drop a catch or have a bad performance, and you go back to the hotel and you’re not allowed to leave your room. There’s all this time and there’s no distraction from your thoughts.”

Life is not what we thought it was before the pandemic put the brakes on the world. But what is life now that a single positive test for Covid-19 could change everything? That is not at all clear, which is disquieting for most of us. For those accustomed to tightly regimented systems, it can be terrifying. Especially when they are marking time in the bubble.

“It would be fine if it was six weeks; even nine weeks, which is about the maximum [people can endure safely],” Van Heerden said. “But when it’s six weeks and another six weeks followed by another six weeks, it can get overwhelming. Athletes are very goal-orientated. If they know they have 10 bubbles, they could do them. But is it 10 bubbles? Is it two? Is it 40? A lot of my job with players and athletes I work with is to say we don’t know. So we have to focus on the things we can control right now, and do the things that we know can help you in the bubble. And we don’t know if it’s going to be 10 bubbles. If you’re running the Comrades [a 90km ultra-marathon in South Africa] you can’t think of the 90th kilometre at the beginning, otherwise you’re going to be overwhelmed. It’s natural, but our job is to bring the focus back to just now, or just today, or just this week.

“Normally players wake up and their day is incredibly structured — they know what they need to do, where they’re heading and what goal they have. Now they wake up outside of that and it’s really hard for them. A lot of elite athletes get told what to do. They don’t have to think what to do. As a player, your bags magically disappear and then magically reappear outside your hotel room. I know the public will say that’s ridiculous, and that players could do that themselves. But this is the world they live in and it’s very real for them. That’s what they’ve grown up in and what they know, and to be thrown into a different world is difficult. They’re having to handle things themselves, and as strange as it may sound, for them it’s almost like having to learn a new skill.”

John Smit, who captained the Springboks to victory in rugby’s 2007 World Cup, told Van Heerden he didn’t know how to buy an airplane ticket until he planned his honeymoon. He married after playing 39 of his 111 Tests, and in eight countries other than his own. Anthony Delpech, a champion jockey who has ridden 116 Grade 1 winners in South Africa, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates, was a stranger to drawing cash from an ATM: “His agent or his wife would do that.” Not knowing how to perform what most of us would regard as an everyday task is one thing. Not knowing how to recognise the difference between a pout after a poor performance and a problem that could take years to resolve is distinctly another.

“People think, ‘How can you be mentally tough and have mental health issues?’,” Van Heerden said. “I was speaking to an athlete the other day who said you have to be incredibly tough to deal with mental health issues. You can be a mentally tough cricketer, but there are things that happen in life that have nothing to do with weakness or with having a weak mind and your coping mechanisms can be overwhelmed.”

It doesn’t help that professional sport, while inconsequential to reality, can unfairly target and punish those who get it wrong. “If you make a mistake, it’s so public,” Van Heerden said. “If you are battling there’s nowhere to hide. And the public can be brutal in their comments. No-one walks out there to try and make a duck or to try and bowl badly, but in the day and age of social media everyone has an opinion. We talk to the players about social media and a lot of them are really adept at staying off it or managing it, but with nothing to do late at night you end up scrolling through Twitter. That’s not the best idea. Players are human: they’re people first. They’re mentally tough, but mental health is something different.”

The pandemic has only added to that part of the players’ challenge: “There are a lot of changes [because of the virus], and yet they still have to perform. The public is unforgiving — you’re still getting paid to play, so they expect you to win. We’re all having to adjust, but it’s not nearly as public for us as it is for elite athletes.”

To help ease the load, an app requires South Africa’s players to answer, daily, questions that indicate their levels of wellbeing. The information is forwarded to a sports psychologist — not Van Heerden — and Stephen Cook, the former Test opening batter who since the beginning of last year has been SACA’s cricket operations and player engagement manager. No-one else sees or knows what the players reveal.

“The psychologist can ask me if I’ve touched base with a guy and whether he is doing OK,” Cook said. “Sometimes he has put in a lower rating because he’s feeling a bit down in confidence after he’s had a couple of first-ballers. It might not be that he’s struggling mentally; he’s just feeling naturally a bit down that day. So it’s not perfect, but it’s a reminder to the players that there is something available. There are people there for them if they need them. Sometimes guys who get into a pickle that way, they don’t see the wood for the trees. It’s a daily reminder that someone does care about you enough to check up on you.

“For some players it’s great. For others it will be a bit of a burden. They just want to get on with life. But that’s fine. I think we’ve taken the attitude that we’ll try and help everyone, and if it helps one or two guys who otherwise wouldn’t have spoken to someone, that’s fantastic. Then we’ve done something to help. It’s a piece of a puzzle rather than an ultimate one-stop shop answer.

“If I think back to mine and previous eras, you wouldn’t have opened up. It would have been seen as a sign of weakness. But now some of the best players in the world in a variety of sports are more than happy to say, ‘Listen, I’m struggling’, and feel totally safe with the perceived fallout.”

Did the app catch De Kock? We cannot know. But we do know that he handles the fish he reels in with amazing grace. And that once he has found them he allows them to be lost in their own freedom. Like he is now. Until next time.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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South Africa’s new batting normal: All fall down

“It’s stupid ways … finding ways to get out in really important moments of the game. It really cost us.” – Mark Boucher

Telford Vice | Cape Town

HOW do you end a string of collapses? What did you do when they happened to the team you played in? The question induced Mark Boucher to look away from the camera during his online press conference in Rawalpindi on Monday, as if he would rather be somewhere else talking about something else. But there was no escaping the state of South Africa’s batting.

Chasing 370 to square the Test series against Pakistan, they were 129 runs away from winning when they suffered a crash of seven wickets for 33. Six wickets had gone down for 87 in the first innings. Slides of 5/41 and 9/70 blighted their efforts in Karachi.

Boucher, now South Africa’s coach, has 147 Test caps. Collapses are part of cricket. What did the team he played in do when the malaise affected them?

“We never really had major batting collapses, I think due to the fact that we had quite a few allrounders in the side,” he said. “In the recent past we haven’t had allrounders. We added an extra allrounder [Wiaan Mulder] to the equation in this game and it didn’t seem to work, although it seemed to work in the first innings a bit.”

Mulder made 33 and 20, facing 83 and 40 balls. That’s not bad, and he should develop into a player capable of bigger contributions. But it’s a long way from the days when the presence of Jacques Kallis, Shaun Pollock and Boucher himself made dismissing South Africa one of the game’s biggest challenges.

Boucher played in 52 Test series. South Africa won 32 of them and lost only 10. When his career was ended by an eye injury in July 2012, they had not been beaten for nine series going back almost five years. It would be nearly another two years, and another half-dozen series, before they lost. They were particularly tough to beat on the road, where they went from October 2007 to November 2015 without losing a rubber — played 14, won nine. How the pendulum has swung. South Africa have lost all of their last four away series. All told, they have won two of their most recent seven rubbers and lost the rest.

Here’s another way of illustrating the difference between South Africa’s team of Boucher day and the current edition. In the last series loss he played in, in Sri Lanka in July and August 2006, South Africa were dismissed for 169 in the first innings at SSC. Sri Lanka declared at 756/5 — Kumar Sangakkara scored 287 and Mahela Jayawardene 374, and they shared 624 — and won by an innings. But not before South Africa fought back with a second innings of 434 that featured a century opening stand between Andrew Hall and Jacques Rudolph and two half-century partnerships. Five days later at the P Sara Oval, South Africa were 70/4 early in the second hour. Another hiding loomed. But Ashwell Prince and AB de Villiers put on 161 in a total of 361. Their second innings was worth 311, and the closest they came to a collapse was losing their last four wickets for 76. Sri Lanka won by a solitary wicket. South Africa have come a long way since then. Backwards.

“We put ourselves under pressure by being four down quickly and then we gathered some sort of momentum and then we gave it away,” Boucher said of the wreck of Rawalpindi. “In this game, the new ball played a massive role in the collapse, which can happen, but not to the extent of losing seven wickets for 30-odd runs. That’s a major batting collapse, especially when you’re looking to chase down a total.

“It’s a few things: mental application, match awareness. Our match awareness against the new ball wasn’t quite where it should be. We needed to understand that new ball was going to be vitally important to get through. In the history of games here, when that new ball is 15 to 20 overs old it gets a lot easier to bat. We need to look after those 15 to 20 overs and we didn’t do that and they picked up wickets. And the reason why we suffered that huge batting collapse.”

Asking Boucher to fix a problem he has little first-hand experience of may seem unfair, but that’s now part of his job. “We keep talking about the mental side of batting and mental application,” he said. “We just seem to, in big moments, when we really need to drive home an advantage and we start getting some sort of partnership, find ways to get out. In the first innings, with Temba [Bavuma] and Wiaan, when it really looked like the game was getting easier and we were building a partnership [of 49, the biggest of the innings], we get a runout. It’s stupid ways … finding ways to get out in really important moments of the game. It really cost us. In the first Test, two run outs in the top six is always going to put you under pressure.”

Worse, South Africa’s issues didn’t start and end with batting. “I thought maybe one or two sessions we let it slip with the bowling, but I thought our bowling was fantastic on this tour,” Boucher said. “The big difference was fielding. If you look at this game, in the second innings they’re 80/5 [76/5]. We have two dropped chances in two balls. That’s 80/7. At the tail end with no frontline batter, we bowl them out for 100. Give them an extra 50 runs and we bowl them out for 120. We end up chasing 220, we win the game. We wouldn’t be worrying about these things. Big moments really cost us. Our match awareness of when to tighten the screws just lacked. That’s the reason why we lost the game. Pakistan, on the other hand, took some fantastic catches when they were offered those opportunities. We didn’t bat well, we didn’t field well, but I thought our bowling was one things that stood out. We saw some really great spells from guys. We created opportunities, we just didn’t take them. That cost us, in this game alone, 150 runs.”

And then there’s Quinton de Kock, who hasn’t reached 50 in his last seven innings and has failed to score a century for 19 knocks — although he made it to 95 some 14 innings ago. On top of that, all seven referrals of umpires’ decisions he made in Pakistan were unsuccessful. Was the captaincy dulling his edge as a player?

“If he’d scored runs you wouldn’t be asking me this,” Boucher said. “Batters go through periods where they score and where they maybe don’t score. With ‘Quinnie’, unfortunately it’s been when he has had the captaincy as well. It’s difficult to answer yes or no because batters go through lack of form at certain times. The big thing is that when you are a captain everything gets highlighted. His lack of form has been highlighted, and people are asking is it because of the captaincy. And maybe it is.

“We’ll have these discussions when we get back home. I’ll sit down with the convenor of selectors [Victor Mpitsang] and see the way going forward. We have a bit of time now to make not an emotional decision but a smart decision. If it’s looking at someone else to take over the reins, the time is probably now to do it.”

Australia’s late withdrawal over Covid fears from a Test series in South Africa next month — which CSA has taken up in a complaint to the ICC — means Boucher doesn’t know when next his team will be in whites. So he can’t set about repairing the damage. But the problems also can’t worsen. Is that time and space to think and breathe, or is it purgatory? If you’re Boucher, it’s probably both.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Markram pays cruel price for proving the power of faith

“There’s certainly a lot more hurt than satisfaction from my side.” – Aiden Markram

Telford Vice | Cape Town

FUNNY thing, faith. Especially for the irreligious. But even they know it when they see it, and it was etched into every inch of Aiden Markram on Monday as he walked out with Rassie van der Dussen to continue South Africa’s bid to win the Rawalpindi Test and square the series.

Their partnership was already worth 94 and the pitch was more than decent for a fifth-day surface. But the target of 370, more than any team had scored to win a Test in Pakistan, was still 243 runs away. Even so, by the look of Markram — jaw set as square as his shoulders, eyes level, clear and focused, purpose in his stride — he had faith that success was there for the taking.

And it was taken. Not by South Africa. By Markram. He came to Pakistan with a reputation as a stellar talent who was vulnerable to spin. His best effort in Asia had been the 39 he made against India in Visakhapatnam in October 2019, which at 74 balls was also the longest of his eight innings in the subcontinent. He had been dismissed by spinners in seven of those innings. He averaged 10.50 in Asia. In his other 32 innings, all of them in South Africa, he had scored five centuries and averaged 46.74.

But you need to believe before you can do. And Markram did so well enough to score 74 in the first innings in Karachi, and to face 224 balls — his longest Test innings anywhere. In the second innings in Rawalpindi, he was there for 243 deliveries. His 108 was a triumph of discipline and application and a ringing repudiation of the earlier doubts over his ability in conditions that aren’t of his choosing.

So why did Markram seem close to tears at an online press conference on Monday? Those soldierly shoulders had slumped, and his eyes were as soft as an antelope’s. And shining. While Markram had had enough faith that his team could win, perhaps the other South Africans did not. And Pakistan had more, much of it bundled into the unassuming frame of Hasan Ali — who bowled Van der Dussen with the third ball of the day’s play, trapped Faf du Plessis in front in the fifth over, and had Markram and Quinton de Kock caught behind off consecutive deliveries with the second new ball.

South Africa were bowled out for 274, losing their last seven wickets for 33 runs, the match by 95 runs, and the series 2-0. In the first innings, the collapse was 6/87. Karachi saw crashes of 5/41 and 9/70. “Poor batting by South Africa, and that’s saying it nicely,” was how Daryll Cullinan summarised Monday’s mess on commentary.

Cricket has many cruelties, but the worst of them is that a player who has excelled against the odds and under pressure can be made to feel as if they have done nothing of value in the overarching story of their team’s failure. Markram was that player on Monday: “Ultimately we as sportsmen are highly competitive people. So to lose a game and a series eats more at you than one or two personal performances that might have gone alright. There’s certainly a lot more hurt than satisfaction from my side. It felt like there were stages, throughout the series and throughout this game, where just when we started making progress and getting ahead, we’d give it away. That’s where the hurt comes from. It’s time for us to take lessons and to learn and to not make the same mistakes going forward.”

How might that happen, given South Africa’s dismal record of throwing their wickets away as if they were hand-grenades from which the pins had been pulled? “You have to appreciate the fact that we are in the subcontinent and getting in is really tough,” Markram said. “The nature of the conditions often suggests that wickets will fall in clusters. Obviously we haven’t got the solution for it. But the lesson will be to keep minds nice and calm and clear when going out to bat, just to get through the first 20 or 30 balls to settle the nerves. Normally, once you’re in, it does slowly but surely get a bit easier.”

There was no opportunity to remind Markram that South Africa had been undone by fast bowling in Rawalpindi, where Hasan took 10/114. Besides, that might have pushed him over the edge. “The mood is pretty down at the moment,” he said. “It’s never nice losing matches and losing Test series. It definitely leaves a bitter taste. We will take time to reflect and see where we can improve and hopefully when it matters we can deliver.”

With Australia postponing their series in South Africa, which had been scheduled for next month, over Covid fears, when Markram and his teammates might have the chance to show that they have done that successfully is uncertain. “It’s always a really exciting series to be a part of and there’s normally quite good cricket on display,” Markram said of the Australians’ late decision. “It’s not ideal that that series isn’t going ahead. We’re just going to have to wait over the next couple of weeks to find out if there will be … or, let’s put it this way, to find out when the next Test series will be for us.”

By then, given De Kock’s unconvincing performance as a Test captain in Pakistan, Markram could be in charge of the side. “I haven’t given it too much thought,” he said. “I don’t think with, what’s it been now, four Test matches this season, it allows a player to all of a sudden think very differently and think along those lines. It’s something I would naturally enjoy doing but nothing I have given too much time of day to. My goal is ultimately to score runs and win games. That’s still the focus for me. It’s difficult to say what’s going to happen.”

It is. That’s why you need faith.

First published Cricbuzz.

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Hasan Ali back from the edge of the abyss, and ‘boom!’

“I used to do my rehab at 4am but I was motivated to make a comeback.” – Hasan Ali

Telford Vice | Cape Town

HE hasn’t the athleticism of Shaheen Afridi or Kagiso Rabada, nor the pace of Anrich Nortjé. He isn’t particularly tall, nor especially quick. He doesn’t swing the ball as much as Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis used to do, and Shoaib Akhtar’s grimy malevolence is not his style. But he is explosive, and he knows it. If you don’t know it, Hasan Ali tells you at the top of his lungs when he takes a wicket: “Boom!” Nevermind the tuk-tuk, start the generator.

We’ve seen and heard a lot of that over the past five days. On Monday, Hasan accomplished what none of the other bowlers above have done by taking 10 wickets in a Rawalpindi Test. It’s true that Afridi, Rabada and Nortjé haven’t had much opportunity to play in Pindi, but only one other player has banked 10 wickets there: Mohammad Zahid, the comet who collided with reality almost as soon as he streaked into view. Zahid claimed 11/130 against New Zealand in Pindi in November 1996 — making him the only Pakistani to take 10 on debut — and was lauded as the game’s fastest bowler by Brian Lara. But back injuries limited him to just four more Tests. His last was at Newlands in January 2003, when he took 2/108 in South Africa’s only innings. That was also his last match for Pakistan. He was 27.

Hasan will turn 27 on July 2 this year. That’s not his only parallel with Zahid, and indeed with Junaid Khan, Rumman Raees and Mohammad Abbas, and the rest of the host of Pakistan fast bowlers whose careers have been derailed by injury. Back and rib problems kept Hasan off the field from June to September in 2019. By then, because of failing form not helped by other injuries, he had lost his contract with the PCB. The first Test against South Africa in Karachi last week was his first match for Pakistan in 19 months. On a spinner’s pitch, he was ineffective and took 2/122. So if you thought you saw desperation in the way he tore to the bowling crease in Rawalpindi, you weren’t wrong.

“The special thing [about his haul of 10/114] was that I was injured,” Hasan told an online press conference on Monday. “And the other thing was the hard work that I put in. I was making a comeback and making a comeback doesn’t mean just coming into the side, playing the match and going back. My aim was to perform for my country.”

Job done. Hasan dismissed Rassie van der Dussen in both innings, and counted the wickets of Dean Elgar, Aiden Markram, Faf du Plessis and Quinton de Kock among his trophies. More than that, he bowled with heart and soul as much as with technique and talent. South Africans would agree. He is that guy in the opposing team, the one you are happy to see succeed despite the badge on his shirt. Maybe overcoming adversity unites those who would otherwise be divided.

“It was a very tough time for me,” Hasan said of his long months away from the game. “I can’t even begin to express how tough a time it was … I was injured and it was the time of corona, too, which meant I couldn’t even go anywhere. It was really hard but I really want to thank my wife, who was always with me and always motivated me; my older brother, who motivated me and kept telling me that I will make a comeback. There were some senior players, too, like Shoaib Malik, who supported me a lot, and special thanks to the PCB too, who supported me throughout. They sent me for my rehab and the medical panel was always in touch with me. And I also didn’t give up and I put in a lot of effort to make a comeback. I still remember I used to [do] my rehab at 4am but I was motivated to make a comeback.”

Given all that, Hasan’s barbed response when he was asked why he bowled only four overs in his first spell on Monday, and then left the field temporarily, is easily forgiven: “It is a team game. This is not a Hasan Ali cricket game, who has put money in the game and he will bowl whenever he wants … There’s a strategy for the team and I picked wickets [of Van der Dussen and Du Plessis] in the four overs, and there was a plan after that to bring back the spinners. There was a lot in the wicket for the spinners, although they didn’t pick up too many wickets. There was no problem with my fitness.”

Cricket would be a better game if more players were as forthright. As Hasan bowls, so he talks: like a man unafraid of confronting a challenge, on or off the field. And not only in rehab at 4am. For one thing, his wife, Shamia Arzoo, a Dubai-based flight engineer, is Indian; a complication in its own league. For another, five months before their wedding last August she told an Instagram follower that her favourite batter was Virat Kohli. In the toxic mix of sport, social media and cynical nationalism powered by clickbait, such disparate dots are easily connected by those who have ulterior intent.

But the couple would seem to be made of stuff stern enough to clear those hurdles, as suggested by the Pakistan team’s giddy celebration after they clinched victory by 95 runs on Monday to seal the series 2-0. Arranged in a circle, they swayed their hands from side to side as if rocking a cradle.

“I’m going to be a father soon,” Hasan explained. “My baby is on the way.” There’s a shorter way to say that: “Boom!”

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Nirvana or nowhere for South Africa

“We’ve got to make sure we’re ready for the challenge, and that we’re ready to enjoy the challenge.” – Enoch Nkwe

Telford Vice | Cape Town

HEAD south-east. In 2,218 kilometres, stop, watch and learn. If an app could guide South Africa — or any non-Asian tourists — to victory in Rawalpindi, that’s what it might tell them to do. But the visitors would arrive at their destination too late. Because the lesson was handed down while Pakistan were building their advantage in the second Test.

Set out as instructed from Rawalpindi, passing through Kathmandu, skirting Bhutan, and you will arrive, after a flight of 11 hours and 50 minutes, in Chattogram, Bangladesh’s second city. It was there on Sunday that West Indies successfully completed their chase for 395, the highest winning fourth innings in all 675 Tests played in Asia.

South Africa don’t need 395 to beat Pakistan and square the series. They require 25 fewer runs. And when your batting is as fragile as theirs has been, more often than not and for too long, 25 extra runs might as well be 250.

More than nine years have passed since South Africa last scored 200 or more to win: against Australia at Newlands in November 2011. Phillip Hughes played in that match. Vernon Philander made his debut. Yes, it was that long ago. Since then they have been dismissed in the fourth innings for 200 or fewer nine times.

The other side of that equation is that, during the same period, Pakistan have they been beaten because they failed to defend a target of at least 200 only once — when England made 277 to win by three wickets in Southampton in August last year. Pakistan have bowled out teams in the fourth innings for 200 or fewer four times.

South Africa will likely avoid becoming the fifth entry on that list. They are 127/1 going into the last day on a pitch that has remained sound by the standard of Test surfaces anywhere, as Aiden Markram and Rassie van der Dussen have proven in their unbroken stand of 94. But if some of those facts sound familiar it’s because the same pair shared 127 before they became two of three men dismissed in the space of 33 deliveries near the end of the third day of the first Test in Karachi. That became part of a collapse of 9/70, a key factor in Pakistan’s seven-wicket win.

“We lowered our intensity,” was how Enoch Nkwe, South Africa’s assistant coach, described what happened as stumps loomed in Karachi two Thursdays ago. “That was an area we looked at and addressed very well. It’s good to see the same two who were in that situation taking full responsibility to make sure the team doesn’t fall into the same situation.”

The visitors’ intensity disappeared down a rabbit hole again on Sunday. Having reduced Pakistan to 76/5 on Saturday, they conceded 222 more runs in the innings. George Linde took 5/64, his first five-wicket haul in only his third Test and from just 26 overs. But it tells the story of how badly South Africa lost their way that he had claimed 4/17 in his first 14.5 overs. Mohammad Rizwan, who took guard at 63/4, batted through three half-century stands — one, with Nauman Ali, of 97 — and was still there at the end. His reward was an undefeated 115, his first Test century and a performance of shimmering defiance.

Even so, not only are the South Africans confident of breezing past 200, they seem bullish about reaching what would be the fifth-highest target achieved in a subcontinent Test. It would be the highest in Pakistan, where the home side’s 315/9 against Australia in September 1994 is the record. But that was in Karachi. In Rawalpindi, no team have scored more runs in the fourth innings to win a Test than Sri Lanka’s 220/8 in February 2000.

Nkwe wasn’t about to talk that kind of game: “Every opportunity that we get, we must always look to win. After the first Test we had to review where we are as a unit and look at areas in which we need to improve. In this Test we’ve brought ourselves into the game nicely. We believe that we can win this game. That’s the mindset.

“There’s a lot of belief. The players are backing themselves and freeing themselves up. We’ve done a lot of work in terms of clearing their minds and getting them to play within their own character. When the opportunity is there to speed up the game, do that. If it’s not there we need to absorb the pressure as well as we can. We’ve got to make sure we’re ready for the challenge, and that we’re ready to enjoy the challenge.”

If you didn’t know better, you might have thought the South Africans had been inspired by debutant double centurion Kyle Mayers and company in Chattogram. “I’m sure tonight, when we watch some highlights, the guys might find some sort of motivation [from West Indies’ triumph]. But we have enough role models in our dressingroom.”

Rizwan had news for South Africa: “Today they came with good intent and they attacked us. That’s Test cricket. It’s a five-day game and it goes up and down. And we still have one day left. The pitch is taking spin and we have quick bowlers for when the ball is new. Tomorrow is a different day. Inshallah we’ll get them out.”

Not long before he spoke, Rizwan had caught what became the last ball of Sunday’s play. It was delivered by Nauman, and it spun so sharply and bounced so steeply that it needed slick work to stop it from costing byes. After he had snared it, Rizwan stood, gloved hands high above his shoulder, staring at the spot on the pitch from where the snake had sprung. No doubt some of his reaction was gamesmanship, and fair enough in the context of an intriguing context. But some was a genuine response to a fine nugget of bowling.

Markram took no notice of Rizwan’s antics. He had aimed a textbook forward defensive at the delivery, which more or less laughed out loud at him as it scooted past his outside edge. Unflustered, Markram stayed within the frame of the stroke for a long moment. Seconds later, when the light was pronounced too poor to allow play to continue, he tucked his bat under his arm and his chin into his chest, and made his way off the ground like someone who was indeed looking forward to Monday’s challenge. So did Van der Dussen. They seemed certain of their destination, no directions needed.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Fate and finger collide, but George Linde is ‘OK, actually’

“I started running off the field because I saw a bone sticking out.” – George Linde

Telford Vice | Cape Town

“AG, you know, it’s OK, actually,” George Linde began when he was asked, during an online press conference on Saturday, about the state of the little finger on his bowling hand. Then he got down to the gory details of what happened on Thursday, when Babar Azam smashed the left-arm spinner’s 17th ball of the second Test in Rawalpindi straight back at him.

“I thought that’s my season done when I saw the injury,” Linde said. “I started running off the field because I saw a bone sticking out. As I was running I just popped it back in myself.”

All television viewers saw as Linde loped off was blood painting his whites an alarming shade of red. He covered the rest with his hands. “The doctor and the physio were awesome,” he said. “I got stitches, went for X-rays, and luckily, for some reason, my finger wasn’t broken.”

So Linde returned to the fray. He sent down just 18 more balls in Pakistan’s first innings, without success. But in nine overs on Saturday he bowled with fine control and attacking intent to take the important wickets of Azhar Ali, Fawad Alam and Faheem Ashraf in nine overs that cost only a dozen runs. And that despite having to change the way he held the ball: “I had to make a small adjustment with the grip. Not too much. I never knew I use my pinkie when I bowl. Now, every time I bowl, I’ve got to first lift it up a little bit so I can get a better grip on the ball.”

If that seems too stoic to be true, consider that Linde is 29, and that before he made his Test debut against India in Ranchi in October 2019 he didn’t seem bound for a place at the top table. Consider, too, that he has had to bowl his way into a team that already includes Keshav Maharaj. And that he mightn’t have played in Rawalpindi had Tabraiz Shamsi not been taken out of the mix by fears that he wasn’t yet over the back spasm that had ruled him out of the first Test in Karachi. So, unlike that of many players, Linde’s perspective isn’t short on reality: “You don’t know when you’re going to get the opportunity to play for your country,” he said. “So that’s not going to get me down. It’s just pain.”

And there was a bigger picture to consider: “There are people sick at home, people who are seriously ill, who are dying because of Covid or other diseases or something else. My injury is nothing compared to that. You’re playing for your country. I’m not going to stand back just because my finger is a bit sore. It’s painful for 10 minutes. You get an injection and you go back.”

Please, Mr Linde, keep coming back.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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The devil in the details of South Africa’s batting problems

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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From Asia with love for South Africa’s fast bowlers

At home, if you run in hard, bowl fast and get the ball in the right areas, you’ve already taken half a wicket a lot of the time.” – Anrich Nortjé

Telford Vice | Cape Town

IT started with Allan Donald. Then came Brett Schultz, twice; the same number as Shaun Pollock and Morné Morkel. Lance Klusener, Jacques Kallis and Kyle Abbott own one each. Dale Steyn has five. Anrich Nortjé became the ninth in Rawalpindi on Friday.

The ninth South Africa fast bowler, that is, to claim five wickets in a Test innings in Asia. Pakistanis might think that an odd point to make, considering their current prime minister’s previous occupation and the exploits of Wasim and Waqar. Before the ongoing second Test, Rawalpindi itself had yielded 71 wickets to spin and 205 to seam. But, over the Indian Ocean and far away, the pitches of the subcontinent — all of them — aren’t considered suitable for producing quality quicks. Rather bowl spin, keep wicket, or bat. Bowl seam up? On those dust traps? Why would you want to subject yourself to that hardship?

It’s a view fractured through the prism of a place where pitches do indeed boom with bounce and sing with sideways movement. And it’s clearly wrong, as Nortjé proved again in taking 5/56. He ended Pakistan’s first innings by removing Nauman Ali and Shaheen Afridi in three deliveries, brutal balls aimed at the ribs. Catches were duly fended to the close fielders. Hapless batters caught in the crosshairs at the Wanderers or Centurion will know exactly how Nauman and Afridi felt.

Nortjé bowled well enough — gliding rather than thundering to the crease, letting loose in one lithe, liquid line, and allowing the ball, erring batters and eager fielders to do the rest — to outshine even that thoroughbred of the breed, Kagiso Rabada. For only the third time in the 35 innings in which he has bowled 10 or more overs, Rabada went wicketless. As much as South Africa have come to depend on Rabada, with Nortjé firing from one end and Keshav Maharaj sealing off the other, his lack of success was hardly felt.

A significant chunk of the worth of Nortjé’s work was undone by stumps, which South Africa stumbled to 166 behind and with their top four dismissed. But they would have been in a significantly worse position were it not for him. In this, too, there was evidence of fast bowling’s relevance on pitches like these: consecutive deliveries from Hasan Ali found the thin edge of Dean Elgar’s bat and breezed past — and perhaps under — Rassie van der Dussen’s defences.

Conditions, conditions, conditions is a mantra of those who like to think they know more about cricket than the rest of us. In most prejudice there is a little truth, as there is in this. No subcontinent pitch can compare to South Africa’s livelier surfaces. But that doesn’t mean fast bowlers should pitch up in disguise in Asia. “To try and utilise what you get is important,” Nortjé told an online press conference. “Plans do change [depending on the conditions]. Here, you want to be as tight as possible and not give any width. Especially when the ball was harder, we saw an opportunity to get the short ball through and it paid off. It’s still the subcontinent but you still want to try and be on the money with the bouncer especially … It wasn’t your typical wicket, like we had last week [in Karachi] where there wasn’t a lot of bounce. Here, there is still something in your favour if you run in hard.”

Nortjé is playing in his 10th Test, but even before coming to Pakistan he knew of whence he spoke on Friday. He earned his first two caps in Pune and Ranchi in October 2019, when he bowled a total of 49.3 overs and conceded 179 runs for the reward of one wicket. But it was quite a prize: Virat Kohli trapped in front with an inswinger that followed two balls that moved away.

“I was quite happy that conditions weren’t easy; I learnt a lot from that,” Nortjé said of his India experience. “You try to prepare as much and as well as possible, but putting in a performance in the subcontinent means a lot … At home, if you run in hard, bowl fast and get the ball in the right areas, you’ve already taken half a wicket a lot of the time.”

He had made some bespoke adjustments with the help of Piet Botha, his coach at Eastern Province, for Pakistan: “One of the big things I’ve learnt is the angles that I run and where my momentum is going. I’ve been focusing more on that in the last while. We try to keep specific things as simple as possible. But, particularly in the last while, I try to keep my angles — even where I start running from — as straight as possible. That’s helped me a lot, particularly in the subcontinent. When I go a bit wider, because there’s not a lot of bounce here, it’s an easy cut shot most of the time. In South Africa you’re trying to get into that channel. Here you’re trying to hit the stumps most of the time, and you also don’t want to be bowling on leg stump. Hopefully I can take it back to South Africa. That will help me ask more questions.”

There’s a basic humility about Nortjé that he would brought with him from Uitenhage, a no-nonsense town in the Eastern Cape some 40 kilometres from the bigger — not big — smoke of Port Elizabeth, which is home to St George’s Park. Or South Africa’s slowest pitch. Fast bowlers grow up hard there. That can only help Nortjé in the second innings. “We’ve seen one or two stay low, so maybe that will come into play more,” he said. “I don’t think the fast bowlers will be completely out of it. There may be different methods of going about it but I think we will be in the game later on.”

Nortjé is rarely out of the game, even when South Africa’s aren’t in the field. Against England in December 2019 and January 2020, he batted for more than two hours and faced 89 balls at Centurion, and for more than three hours facing 136 deliveries at St George’s Park.

Can bowl, can bat, cannot give anything less than his all. Because a good fast bowler is a good cricketer, whatever they’re asked to do and wherever they’re asked to do it.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Rawalpindi rips, then rests

Batting in the morning was about staying out of trouble. In the afternoon it was no trouble.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

ON a clear day in Rawalpindi you can see all the way to the foothills of the mighty Himalayas. Thursday was, for the most part, not a clear day. It was grey and drippy, and the wall of gloom that dominated the sky kept a respectful distance until tea, when it soaked the scene.

South Africa would be forgiven for being quietly relieved at not having to endure a third session. After a hurtling start in which they removed Pakistan’s top order at the cost of one run across 23 deliveries, they laboured for no reward for the next 43.1 overs.

Given the start they made the South Africans would have been justified in thinking the day would offer them opportunities for more success. But a pitch that spat with spin in the dampness of a dewy morning smiled ever more broadly on batters as the day lengthened. The outfield was as slick as an ice rink throughout, adding value to almost all strokes. “With the newish ball and moisture, the ball sort of sticks in the wicket a bit more,” Keshav Maharaj told reporters. “We saw that, as the day went on and the moisture seeped away from the surface, the turn was minimised substantially … Everyone was a bit confused as to what to expect but it seems pretty hard. The moisture might bind it together come tomorrow. At the end of the day tomorrow we’ll probably have a clearer idea and understanding as to how the wicket’s going to deteriorate, if it is going to deteriorate.”

Babar Azam and Fawad Alam made hay whether or not the sun was shining, adding 123. They remain so focused on forging ahead on Friday that neither was made available at the post-play press conference. Babar’s textbook technique dazzled in his driving through the covers. Fawad’s extraordinary unorthodoxy didn’t get in the way of his off drive. They were the embodiment of the sacred and the profane. As Maharaj said, “They absorbed pressure nicely and bided their time, and after lunch it seemed to get a little bit easier to bat on the wicket.”

It was indeed a tale of two sessions. Whereas batting in the morning was an exercise in staying out of trouble, in the afternoon it was all about not being given any trouble — neither by the surface nor by the bowlers. Babar and Fawad looked as if they were making themselves comfortable to watch the steady scoring of runs, not as if they would to have to score those runs themselves. Batting isn’t easy at this level, but they made it seem so.

It was anything but when Maharaj was introduced in the eighth over. His first delivery bounced and jagged away from Imran Butt, who pushed forward defensively and steered a healthy edge to the single slip, Temba Bavuma — who dropped an eminently takeable catch. That cost Maharaj a single. It was the only run he conceded from his first 28 balls, in which he had Butt caught behind and trapped Azhar Ali in front for a duck. The most impressive aspect of Maharaj’s bowling wasn’t that he turned the ball on a turning pitch — anything else would have been grounds for concern — but that he realised the value of his quicker, straighter delivery even in those circumstances. He used it to great effect.

And here we need to pause. Criticism of Quinton de Kock’s captaincy is not difficult to find, and some of it is warranted. He was found wanting in the first Test in Karachi in the key areas of referring umpiring decisions and making bowling changes. The sensitivity of the subject is perhaps why South Africa’s team management has taken issue with reports that Mark Boucher has confirmed that the Rawalpindi Test would be De Kock’s last at the helm. Boucher told a press conference on Wednesday: “When we get back after this tour we’ve got a bit of time before our next Test series. So we can sit down and make a good, solid call on who can take over from him and release him from that burden, and try and get the best out of him.” De Kock was appointed until the end of the season. With Australia pulling out of their series in March over fears of South Africa’s Covid-19 infection rate, the end of the Test season is, as things stand, the end of this match. Management says Boucher’s words have been “misinterpreted”. It is difficult to understand how.

But the point of interrupting the narrative is not to brew an argument. It is to make sure De Kock is given the credit for tossing the ball to Maharaj so early in the match. Only one other South Africa slow bowler has taken two wickets in the first 15 overs of a Test — Reggie Schwarz, whose googly was his stock ball, opened the bowling with another wrist spinner, Aubrey Faulkner, against England at the Old Wanderers in Johannesburg in January 1906. Schwarz dismissed Plum Warner and Lucky Denton with only six runs scored.

Whether De Kock knows any of that doesn’t matter. What does is that he summed up the conditions and the situation and made what proved to be the right decision for his team. That’s what captains do. Good ones, at any rate. When South Africa choose their next Test captain, they should remember this moment — especially if De Kock adds more like it to his curriculum vitae.

Back to the real world of Rawalpindi, where Maharaj’s consistent quality from one end was complemented by a single flash of brilliance from the other an hour before lunch. Anrich Nortjé speared a delivery at Abid Ali, who edged it onto his body. Lurking like a 1.85-metre hawk at short leg, Aiden Markram flung himself rightward and took a fine catch low to the ground and far from where he had crouched.

Babar was joined by Fawad, and Maharaj was proved human after all when Babar hit the last two balls of the next over through cover point and fine leg for four. Fawad clipped the first delivery of the next over, bowled by Nortjé, through Markram’s legs for another boundary. Five overs passed, none of them scoreless. In the context of what had gone before, you could feel the fulcrum tilting and the advantage sliding the other way.

Then George Linde, in his second over, sent down six spotless deliveries to Fawad.

Would he wrestle the match back into South Africa’s corner? No. Babar hammered Linde down the ground in his next over. Before the ball reached the outfield it hit the little finger on Linde’s bowling hand — which he clutched as he ran off, blood spattering onto his whites as he went. He did not return.

South Africa picked all three spinners they have in their squad for the Karachi Test, only for Tabraiz Shamsi to suffer a back spasm 20 minutes before the toss. Doubt about Shamsi’s readiness took him out of the equation for Rawalpindi, but there was no doubt both Maharaj and Linde would play. Now the visitors were down to Maharaj, not counting part-timers like Dean Elgar and Markram. Linde’s finger was stitched and bandaged, and X-rays did not reveal a fracture. “It’s fine,” he could be seen saying, with a dismissive shake of his head, on the sidelines on Thursday while holding a ball and going through the motions of his bowling action. “I was concerned for his well-being, but I’m glad to know that he’s feeling a lot better,” Maharaj said. “If all goes well he should take the field at some stage tomorrow.”

Maharaj himself started the match with an injury: “I was bowling on Tuesday and I felt a really sharp pain in my abdominal rib cage area. I was a bit concerned and it’s still there, but our medical staff sorted me out and made sure I was ready to play this Test match.” On the evidence of the 25 overs he bowled on Thursday, some of them rasping with threats, most of them immaculate, Maharaj will get through this test in one piece. And through this Test with several more wickets. You can see that happening, clearly.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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