“I remember the look on your face when I said I’ll bat first.” – Dean Elgar to Mark Richardson.
Telford Vice | Cape Town
SOUTH Africa’s cricket revolution has been televised. But, considering victory was secured at 4.42am on Tuesday, and broadcast only on an expensive subscription service, not many of the team’s compatriots would have shared the moment. That’s a pity. Coming in the wake of the disaster into which the team had shambled mere days previously, it was something to behold.
Fittingly, the win was sealed by a player who — by several allegedly knowledgeable estimates — shouldn’t have been in the XI. Pick a spinner? At Hagley Oval? Why on earth would you do that, mate? Yet there Keshav Maharaj was, ending the match nine balls after tea on the last day by trapping Matt Henry in front to claim his third wicket of the innings. Maharaj bowled the most overs by a South African in the game, had their best economy rate in the first innings, and took four wickets.
Not the worst for someone who should have been confined to the dressing room. At least, in the first innings: by the time we reached New Zealand’s second dig the same television commentators — Stephen Fleming, Brendon McCullum and Mark Richardson and their combined 250 Test caps among them — who had scoffed at Maharaj’s inclusion were wondering out loud why he hadn’t shared the new ball.
Maybe Maharaj wouldn’t have been as effective had South Africa fielded first, but there was no chance of that happening. There were sniggers of derisive disbelief in the paid pundit gallery after Dean Elgar won the toss. You’re batting first, mate? At Hagley Oval? Really? Tom Latham, too, couldn’t hide a smirk as he confirmed that he would have opted to field: “The way we were able to execute in the conditions early on [in the] last game was really good.”
Elgar hadn’t forgotten the slights by the time of his post-match conversation with Richardson: “I remember the look on your face when I said I’ll bat first. It’s nice to see you with a better smile on your face this time around.”
Had the Kiwis, on and off the field, been so intoxicated by their triumph in the first Test, which was also in Christchurch, that they hadn’t noticed they weren’t going to play the second game on the same pitch? That was last week, mate. Wake up and see the stumps pitched somewhere else. “This wicket was a lot drier and had a lot less grass, and when you walked on it your spikes sunk in,” Kagiso Rabada told an online press conference on Tuesday. “That told you that it’s going to be a little bit slow. As the match moves forward the footmarks are created for ‘Kesh’ to exploit. That was the thinking, and in the end it was the right decision.”
There’s a lesson there about making sure you wear spikes, not trainers, when you’re trying to divine how a pitch might behave. It also helps to open your eyes. “Visually the pitch looked a lot different to the one in the first Test,” Elgar said in media files released by CSA. “There was a lot less green grass and a lot more brown grass. So it looked like a bat first wicket.”
So much for the logic of Elgar’s decision. At least as big a factor in how it came to be made is rooted in who he is: “Because of what happened in the first Test, the easy, soft decision would have been to bowl first. My nature, my character as a leader is not to take the easy way out. It’s to run towards the pressure that you’re facing.”
It took guts to do what Elgar did. His team had been hammered by an innings and 276 runs in seven sessions in the first Test, until Friday South Africa’s only match in the format at this venue. Elgar headed a batting line-up that had failed miserably. Could they fix things? There was only one way to find out, and South Africa’s captain knew that. It’s called taking responsibility.
Never in the other 10 Tests played at Hagley Oval had the captain who won the toss not inserted the opposition. Elgar now owns that first, along with, of course, being the only skipper to guide his team to success there after choosing to bat first. South Africa’s win, by 198 runs, was just New Zealand’s second loss at this ground, where they became the only other team to be bowled out in the fourth innings after Sri Lanka in December 2018.
South Africa went into the match having been dismissed for fewer than 300 in eight of their previous 10 innings, most recently for 95 and 111 in the first Test. To go from those abject lows to totals of 364 and 354/9 — their first declaration in 44 completed innings stretching back to April 2018 — said plenty. But not as much as the fact that, in this match, South Africa reached more than 350 in each innings, regardless of who did what at the toss, for the first time since November 1996. That’s not a statistic. It’s a monument. In the ensuing almost 26 years between that ’96 match, at Eden Gardens, and the second Christchurch game, South Africa played 247 Tests. In all of their 450 Tests, they have made 350 or more in each innings just five times.
Consider, too, that New Zealand are the inaugural World Test Champions (WTC), albeit that they have now lost three of their last five Tests. And that South Africa made the long trip to face them in their own conditions after fighting back fiercely to beat the other finalists, India, in an intensely competitive home series in December and January. And that, while the Kiwis were without Ross Taylor, Kane Williamson and Trent Boult, South Africa were missing Keegan Petersen and Lungi Ngidi and are still adjusting to life after Quinton de Kock. And that Mark Boucher has done his job superbly despite CSA having told him, in no uncertain formal terms, that they are trying to fire him. And that, should Elgar lead his team to another win over Bangladesh in South Africa in March and April, they could become WTC contenders.
Can you see why what happened at Hagley Oval this time around could be called a revolution, mate? As in five days that shook the world?
It was won as much by the experience and dazzling talent of Rabada as by newer names Sarel Erwee and Kyle Verreynne fulfilling their promise. Rabada’s sniping bowling earned him 10 wickets in the series, and his 41 strikes in the past 12 months have made him the world’s leading wicket-taker in that period. His career-best 34-ball 47 in the second innings had as much to do with South Africa’s victory as anything else. Erwee shared a century stand with Elgar in the first innings to set the tone, and went on to score a fine, flinty 108, his first century in his third innings. Verreynne, who would never have thought he would get his hands into the wicketkeeper’s gloves as early as December, when De Kock made a shock retirement, hung tough for an undefeated 136 in the second innings — a performance of impressive maturity that steadied a shaky innings, regained the advantage for South Africa, and represents more than half the total of 248 runs he has made in his nine innings.
Has Rabada, now 52 Tests into a stellar career in which he has claimed 243 wickets at 22.41, been in better form? “It’s very seldom that you feel at your best,” he said. “Every time you go out and play you just want to implement your basics as well as possible, and try to adapt to conditions as well as possible. You’re always facing a different challenge and it’s all about adapting to it. But also trusting your strengths and trying to do all you can to get to your best. But it’s very seldom that that happens. You just have to try and create your own luck through hard work and tactical thinking, and getting yourself in a good mental space. I think you’ve almost got to let the rest just happen.”
Erwee and Verreynne weren’t around, so it was up to Elgar to heap the praise. “His story is a lot deeper than just playing cricket,” he said about Erwee. “He understands the concept of hard work. He’s a favourite in our change room; I think it’s because he doesn’t shut up! It’s never about him. It’s always about what he can do for the side.” And here he is on Verreynne: “He’s had to fill big shoes. It’s great to see his natural ability come out and kick in. He’s been around for some time now, but he’s pretty inexperienced at Test cricket. Maybe a lot of scrutiny has been put on his plate too early in his career, which is unfair.”
The South Africans are now in the throes of a 32-hour trip home, which had they not squared the series in such stirring fashion would no doubt have seemed even longer. As difficult as it is to overstate what they have achieved at Hagley Oval over the past five days, they will be returning on a wing and a particular prayer: that their revolution, unlike all the others, will not be betrayed.
First published by Cricbuzz.
Bulletproof Truth 