The Gabba – Bulletproof Truth

Welcome to Warner’s world

“You know when you play against him it’s always going to be a fierce battle.” – Dean Elgar on David Warner

Telford Vice / Cape Town

DISLIKING David Warner isn’t difficult. How shall we count the ways? One is that he arrived as a T20 basher and played 40 white-ball internationals before he was granted a Test debut. Another is that he had only 11 first-class caps when he was entrusted with opening the batting in a Test. Who, old-fashioned aficionados asked, did this imposter think he was?

Someone who plays hard but fair, Warner might say. Someone who gives his all for his team. Someone who respects the sanctity of competition. Someone who has carved a career out of never giving an inch as much as he has out of talent and skill.

Others would differ. They will see Warner as someone who, in June 2013, took a swing at the innocuous Joe Root late one night in a Birmingham bar. As someone who, a month later in Pretoria, needed the umpires to separate him and the equally hotheaded Thami Tsolekile from coming to blows, twice, during an A match. As someone who, in January 2015, prompted Martin Crowe, the patron saint of decency in the game, to call for a football-style card system to combat what Crowe called the “thuggish” conduct of a man he deemed “the most juvenile cricketer I have yet seen on a cricket field”.

Others, particularly South Africans, will see Warner as someone who, in March 2018, couldn’t handle the kind of disgraceful verbal abuse he was dishing out as he and his victim, Quinton de Kock, made their way up the stairs at Kingsmead. As someone who, also in March 2018, didn’t have the guts to keep walking past a spectator spewing offensive bile at him at Newlands. As someone who led a ball-tampering plot that was exposed during the same match. As someone who decided he would no longer accept the life ban from leadership positions that was part of his punishment for that act — despite accepting it at the time — and wanted that sanction lifted without revisiting the evidence.

What Warner sees when he looks in the mirror is his own business. What others see in his reflection is the epitome of the ugly Aussie. They also see a player who they would love to have in their team. Warner understands winning like few of his peers. He has a more visceral idea of loyalty than any of them. What he doesn’t know about putting opponents under pressure isn’t worth knowing.

Opinions of Warner aside, everyone will see a player who, against so many odds, will earn his 100th Test cap at the MCG on Monday. He will join Justin Langer, Mark Taylor and Matthew Hayden as the only Australian opening batters to reach a century of Tests. Of them only Hayden has made more centuries and scored more runs than Warner. Overall, just six openers have piled up more runs than Warner and just four have more centuries. At 1.7 metres tall — 18 centimetres shorter than Hayden — Warner is a giant of any era.

But this wouldn’t be much of a Warner story if it didn’t come with the caveat that he has scored only 105 runs in six Test innings this season, and hasn’t made a century in his last 26 completed trips to the crease — or since January 2020 — although he has twice been dismissed in the 90s. At 36, the light of his career is dying. Expect him to rage hard against that happening.

You don’t need to tell that to Dean Elgar. Like Warner he bats left-handed and opens the innings, and brings with him onto the field a view of the world that can seem too hard and uncompromising for modern times. Unlike Warner, Elgar is indeed the captain of his team.

Thus with him stops the buck for South Africa being dismissed for 152 and 99 on an admittedly shoddy pitch at the Gabba last weekend. The bigger picture is that the visitors will have to finds ways to buck a trend that has seen them dismissed for fewer than 200 in their last six innings. Given their embarrassment of bowling riches, it is to be expected that they would depend on ball beating bat more often than other teams. But the balance has tilted too far.

The Australians, whose dismissal for 218 in Brisbane marks the only time they have been bowled out in five completed innings, don’t have that problem. They also have a gun attack, which makes them favourites to end South Africa’s run of three successful series in Australia.

Whether he scores runs or not, Warner is going to be central to the saga. Like him or not, he has been for 11 years.

When: Monday, 10.30am Local Time

Where: Melbourne Cricket Ground

What to expect: The biggest crowd South Africa’s Test team have countenanced since their last Boxing Day match in Australia in 2008. Also, temperatures north of 30 degrees Celsius and a chance of rain on the third day. And, perchance, a better pitch for batting than we saw at the Gabba.

Team news:

Australia: Josh Hazlewood is set to miss a third Test as he continues to recover from a side strain. Scott Boland, who has taken 7/87 at 12.42, retains his spot.

Possible XI: David Warner, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith, Travis Head, Cameron Green, Alex Carey, Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins (capt), Nathan Lyon, Scott Boland.

South Africa: Dean Elgar has intimated that the South Africans won’t tamper with their attack, but could fiddle with the batting. Theunis de Bruyn replacing Rassie van der Dussen, who made five and nought at the Gabba, seems a reasonable way to do that.

Possible XI: Dean Elgar (captain), Sarel Erwee, Theunis de Bruyn, Temba Bavuma, Khaya Zondo, Kyle Verreynne, Marco Jansen, Keshav Maharaj, Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortjé, Lungi Ngidi.

What they said:

“Yeah, my back’s up against the wall. But it’s in my DNA to keep being competitive, come out here with a smile on my face and take on whatever opposition we’re going to face.” — David Warner tells us what we’ve known for a long time.

“Him and I go back to the under-19 World Cup in Sri Lanka [in 2006], so he’s been around my career as much as I’ve been around his. To have a record like he does is something special, and I’m sure he and his family are proud of that. He’s been a thorn in South Africa’s side along that journey. You know when you play against him it’s always going to be a fierce battle. I think the respect is mutual.” — Dean Elgar on the joys of being among David Warner’s opponents.

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Pitches, politics and perhaps a chance simply to play: being Khaya Zondo

“You can’t play a game before you’re in it.” – Khaya Zondo declines to wonder what would happen should the MCG harbour another dodgy pitch.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

THE haters won’t like this, but Khaya Zondo’s sense of humour is intact in the wake of the Gabba Test at the weekend, which Australia won in two days. We know this because, told that the most recent Test at the MCG, where the series resumes on Monday, ended in three days, Zondo smiled.

“If it finished in three days that’s longer than the two games I’ve played,” he said during a press conference in Brisbane on Wednesday. “I was saying to one of my teammates that the games I’ve got have each finished in about two days. They’ve both been played on hectically bowler-friendly pitches. But those are the cards we’ve been dealt. I’d love a flat track, and the bowlers would hate it. I’m sure the more opportunities I get I’ll get onto better batting wickets.”

Zondo has featured in three Tests, but his debut sailed below the radar: he was a Covid substitute for Sarel Erwee and his involvement was restricted to fielding for the last hour it took South Africa to wrap up victory by 332 runs over Bangladesh at St George’s Park in April.

But Zondo made a bigger impression at the Oval in September, where his 23 and 16 were among the better efforts in South Africa’s innings of 118 and 169 in a match England won by nine wickets in less than two days of playing time. At the Gabba, Zondo suffered a second-ball duck in the first innings but batted for almost two-and-a-half hours and faced 85 balls for his unbeaten 36. By all three of those measures he was South Africa’s best batter in the second innings.

That’s where the haters come in. Zondo took ugly flak on social media after he was trapped in front by Scott Boland in the first innings. His detractors demanded to know why Theunis de Bruyn or Ryan Rickelton didn’t play ahead of him. De Bruyn’s and Rickelton’s first-class averages are 10.69 and 22.40 points higher than Zondo’s 31.47. It has taken Zondo 220 first-class innings to score his 13 centuries. De Bruyn has 16 tons from 136 innings, and Rickelton 14 from 78.

De Bruyn played the last of his dozen Tests — in which he averaged 19.45 — in Ranchi in October 2019 and has reached or passed 50 only once in 13 first-class and T20 innings for Northerns this season. Even though Zondo has yet to reach a half-century after batting 14 times this summer, it’s disingenuous to say De Bruyn, on current form, has a greater claim to a place in the Test XI than Zondo.

Rickelton is not in the Test squad. He has been ruled out by torn ankle ligaments and troublesome bone growth, in the same ankle, and requires surgery that he has elected to delay: a reasonable decision considering he is due to earn the equivalent of more than USD58,000 for playing for Mumbai Indians Cape Town in the inaugural edition of the SA20, which starts next month. He is able to keep playing with the help of injections, and has scored four centuries and a 99 in 14 innings across the formats for Gauteng this summer. CSA’s reluctance to take Rickelton to Australia considering his condition is understandable and in line with their policy of not selecting injured players. Replacing him there should he break down would be complicated and take time.

A theory doing the rounds is that an exception has been made for Temba Bavuma and his elbow. So why not for Rickelton? Bavuma sustained the injury during a T20I in Rajkot in June. He decided against surgery, but was passed fit in time to play in a T20I series in India in September and October in the lead-up to the T20 World Cup in Australia. He was rested after the tournament and did not bat in the first innings of South Africa’s tour match in Brisbane from December 9 to 12 because his elbow had flared up again. Malibongwe Maketa, South Africa’s interim coach, suggested the issue returned because of the high amount of preparation Bavuma did in Australia to ensure he was ready for the Test series: “We pushed him hard in the volume of work he did once we got here.” That’s not the same as picking an injured player, or arriving on a tour injured. Besides, Bavuma faced 92 balls in the second innings of the tour match and 70 and 61 deliveries in the Gabba Test. If he’s struggling to hold a bat, it’s not showing.

South Africa’s last Test before they came to Australia, and the only one Zondo and Rickelton have played together, was the game at the Oval in September. Rickelton scored 11 and eight and faced 20 and 15 balls. Zondo made more than double Rickelton’s runs and faced 108 deliveries; more than three times as many as Rickelton. How, then, is replacing Zondo — the incumbent, remember — with Rickelton justified?

Zondo and Bavuma are black. De Bruyn and Rickelton are white, as are most of those who are making the case for them to play. The complexities of cricket in South Africa are daunting for the uninformed, but sometimes it really is that simple. This seems like one of those times.

About batting in Brisbane, Zondo said: “It was a matter of making sure you defended your stumps, because that’s where the dismissals were happening. There was too much in the pitch for the bowlers to bowl short, and if they did they were wasting their time. But if they put the ball up to the bat and tried to get your pad or nick you off, there was a lot happening.

“Any movement off the pitch — whether it was up or down or sideways — you had to make sure you were ahead of it so that you could adjust accordingly. In the first innings the ball that nipped back for me hit me quickly. In the second innings I made sure I watched the ball more closely and moved quicker, in case it nipped or bounced or stayed low, so I could react.”

Despite being dismissed for 152 and 99 the South Africans managed to limit Australia’s victory margin to six wickets, a testament to the conditions. A green pitch that wasn’t hard enough on the first day allowed the ball to make indentations that hardened overnight to facilitate variable bounce on the second day. Thirty-four wickets fell and just 469 runs were scored in the match. In the previous Brisbane Test a year ago, it took three days as well as just more than a session for 31 wickets to fall and 889 runs to be scored in Australia’s nine-wicket win over England.

The surface for the South Africa game was rated “below average” — only the third time an Australian pitch has fallen foul of the ICC since the ratings system started in 2006. The other two instances were a “below average” verdict for a women’s T20I at North Sydney Oval between Australia and England in November 2017 and a “poor” assessment of the MCG pitch for the Ashes Test in December the same year.

The Melbourne strip had the opposite problem to the Gabba: just 24 wickets fell but 1,081 runs were scored, among them two centuries and a double century, and the drawn match went all five days. “The bounce of the MCG pitch was medium but slow in pace and got slower as the match progressed,” match referee Ranjan Madugalle said at the time. “The nature of the pitch did not change over the five days and there was no natural deterioration. As such, the pitch did not allow an even contest between the bat and the ball as it neither favoured the batsmen too much nor it gave the bowlers sufficient opportunity to take wickets.”

Of the four Tests played at the MCG since, only one has crept into a fifth day. Last December, Australia completed their win, by innings and 14 runs, over England in the first session of the third day. Jokes aside, Zondo wasn’t keen to wonder might happen should another dodgy pitch present itself in Melbourne — “You can’t play a game before you’re in it” — but he seemed confident that wouldn’t happen: “I don’t think they will prepare a pitch like they did [at the Gabba] because it’s been deemed below average. I think it will be more fair for bat and ball.”

Not that the South Africans are about to consign their batting failures at the Gabba to the pitch. “We must apply ourselves and get focused, make sure we’re present at the crease all the time,” Zondo said. “You need to be really focused on the ball and have all of your soul and mind there.” Giving a better account of themselves at the MCG would mean “having stronger defences, making sure we keep the good balls out. There’s a lot of them in Test cricket. If they can’t get you out you’ve got half-a-chance of scoring runs.”

Zondo is one of eight children fathered by Raymond Zondo, South Africa’s chief justice and among the few beacons of integrity in a society that is running out of reasons to hope the future will be better than a present ruined by inequality and corruption that has been built on a past ruled by the evils of apartheid. Was his father a cricket person?

“I try not speak too much cricket with him or the rest of my family,” Zondo said, another smile on his face. “I’ll just let them know how I’ve done and how things are going. They’ll check up on me here and there. He’s a man of the law and I’m a cricketer. It’s two different things.”

Indeed, but they’re both in search of justice.

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South Africa’s short, sharp shock another rude awakening

“There needs to be an element of patience and understanding, but you can’t advocate for bad performances.” – Kagiso Rabada

Telford Vice / Cape Town

ANOTHER day, another rude awakening for early rising South Africans. Bowled out for 152 on Saturday, Dean Elgar’s team were dismissed for 99 on Sunday. They batted for a total of 86 overs in a match that was shorter, in terms of deliveries bowled, than all but seven of the 1,699 Tests that have been won and lost.

Only once has a Test in Australia been decided in fewer balls than the 866 needed to settle the issue at the Gabba. That was at the MCG in February 1932, when it took only 656. The visitors then were also South Africa, who were dismissed for 36 and 45. Australia won by an innings and 72 runs. But, because there was no play on the second day and what would have been the third was a Sunday — and so, in that far different world, a rest day — the match stretched into a fourth. On Sunday the game was put out of its misery when Australia won by six wickets just more than an hour after tea on the second day. Or, on a weekend morning in South Africa, before many had brushed their teeth.

Asked during a television interview if he could understand why that had happened, Nathan Lyon said: “I can, because you’ve got the two best bowling attacks going at each other.” He might have added that those attacks were bowling on a pitch that started out as merely challenging and morphed into a monster. Indentations that formed when the surface was too soft on the first day had hardened into craters from which the ball exploded unpredictably.

Dean Elgar and diplomacy aren’t often on the same page, but in his television interview he managed to limit himself to labelling the pitch “pretty spicy” and musing that he didn’t consider the match “a fair contest”. His excoriation came at the press conference that followed.

Kagiso Rabada, who took 4/13 in four overs in Australia’s awkward albeit nominal run chase to finish with 8/89 in the match, managed to find, somewhere in his fast bowler’s soul, a touch of empathy for the eternal enemy: “It looked quite bad out there for the batters. The ball was absolutely doing heaps.”

But, maybe because South Africa’s batting problems weren’t his to solve, Rabada was able to see the bigger issue: “The batting line-up we have is quite inexperienced. In fact, the team we have is relatively experienced if you look at other cricketing nations around the world. Dean Elgar’s our most experienced player followed by, I think, myself and Temba. I’ve played 50-odd Test matches and others haven’t played much.” Elgar has played 80 Tests, Rabada 56 and Bavuma 52. Keshav Maharaj, who has 46 caps, is the only other member of the side who has reached 20 Tests.

“It can get frustrating,” Rabada said. “I don’t mean to single out the batters; I mean that it’s frustrating as a team. You have to understand that sometimes this is what happens in a rebuilding phase. I’ve played in a team with a star-studded line-up, where you’re playing with greats of the game. I don’t think that happens frequently. There’re a whole lot of players who’ve come in who have the ability but need to get used to the international circuit. There needs to be an element of patience and understanding, but at the same time you can’t advocate for bad performances.”

The team in which Rabada made his Test debut, in Mohali in November 2015, took 357 caps into that match. Their ranks included Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers, Vernon Philander and Dale Steyn, who had a combined 293 at that stage. The XI at the Gabba arrived with 304 caps.

That doesn’t seem like a chasmic difference, but South Africa’s top six in Brisbane had 167 caps. In Mohali they had 227. Amla and De Villiers had 182 between them — 15 more than the Gabba top six. The Australians had 561 caps before the Brisbane Test, or 257 more than South Africa. The home side’s top six’s caps equalled the South Africans’ total for their entire XI.

Three of the four teams involved in the Tests that coincided with the Gabba game went in with more experience than South Africa. Bangladesh had 310 caps in their match in Chattogram against India, who had 452. Pakistan’s 233 appearances was the exception. They are in Karachi playing England, who arrived with 373 caps.

Not that experience made much difference for South Africa in Mohali seven years ago, when India dismissed them for 184 and 109 and won by 108 runs after tea on the third day. Then as now the pitch, which raged with turn, was a major factor. All the South Africans could do in the second match in Bengaluru, where the surface glinted almost as greenly as in Brisbane, was look on as four days of the match were lost to rain. Perhaps that wasn’t the worst outcome: Philander, their most potent threat on that kind of surface, was ruled out with an ankle injury two days before the start. The most atrocious conditions manifested in the third match in Nagpur, where the surface was duly rated poor. South Africa lost that series 3-0, and by increasing margins.

They also lost the aura of being Test cricket’s ultimate road warriors, having suffered their first defeat in the 14 away rubbers they had played in nine years. Stung by what they saw as India’s unfair manipulation of the conditions, their response was to ratchet up the South Africanness of their home pitches. That approach reached its zenith — or was it its nadir? — at the Wanderers in January 2018, where play against India was suspended and veered uncomfortably close to being called off because of a pitch that Michael Holding called “shit”. The ICC declared it simply poor. India won by 63 runs inside four days — a milestone on Virat Kohli’s team’s journey towards the belief that, unlike previous India sides, they could succeed anywhere.

That series marked a turning point for conditions in South Africa. Before it was played, the overall Test batting averages at Newlands, Centurion and the Wanderers — the venues for the matches — was 31.08, 31.63 and 30.17. Since then at those grounds the averages have been 25.96, 26.85 and 26.40. There have, of course, been fewer Tests after the 2018 India series than before, and so the comparison can’t prove a decline in batting conditions in South Africa. But it does offer evidence for that argument, and suggest that the upshot is the kind of failure to come to terms with a lively pitch that we saw in Brisbane.

“Ruined” was how Wisden described the pitch for South Africa’s match in Melbourne in 1932. It wasn’t the only reason they were bowled out for next to nothing in both innings: the game was the fifth and last in a series in which Australia had won the first four. And it could have been worse. Donald Bradman, who had scored two double centuries — one of them an undefeated 299 — and two mere centuries in his other five innings in the rubber for a series average of 201.50, twisted his ankle on his way out of the dressing room to field in South Africa’s first innings and was ruled out.

Leg spinner Clarrie Grimmett, who had taken 33 wickets in the series, 14 of them in the previous game in Adelaide, didn’t bowl a ball in the game at the MCG — where Bert Ironmonger, a left-arm finger spinner despite having lost the forefinger on his bowling hand, took 5/6 and 6/18. But the South Africans were not free of Grimmett just yet. He would return to haunt them at home from December 1935 to February 1936 in what would be his last four Tests. He ended his stellar career with a hattrick of 10-wicket hauls in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban. Magically, the 44 wickets he took in the series matched the age he turned on Christmas Day that year.

More recently, and more happily for South Africa, they responded to being beaten by an innings and 276 runs in just more than two days in crazy conditions at Christchurch in February to complete victory by 198 runs at the same ground 10 days later.

Less recently, and less encouragingly for the South Africans, the most recent Test at the MCG, where the series resumes next Monday, was over before lunch on the third day. Last December, Australia beat England by an innings despite scoring only 267. They dismissed England for 185 and 68 on a pitch of zip and zap and on which only Joe Root and Marcus Harris passed 50. Neither made it to 100.

Do more rude awakenings await South Africa’s supporters? It’s difficult not to think so, just as it was after the first Test in Christchurch in February.

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Going, going, Gabba: cruising for a Brisbane bruising

“Is that a good advertisement for our format?” – Dean Elgar on the Gabba pitch.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

DEAN Elgar has slammed the Gabba pitch on which Australia beat South Africa in less than two days, and said he was ignored when he asked the umpires about the dangers of batting on the surface. But he stopped short of branding the conditions unsafe.

Australia completed their victory an hour after tea on Sunday; just five-and-a-half sessions into a match that was scheduled to end around sunset on Wednesday. The game was decided in 866 deliveries — the second fewest in the 355 men’s Tests that have been won and lost in Australia. South Africa were put in to bat and bowled out for 152 and 99. Australia made 218 and 35/4.

By stumps on Saturday, the soft, green, seaming pitch was already studded with divots — which hardened on Sunday to add inconsistent and sometimes steepling bounce to the sideways movement batters had to contend with throughout. Consequently most of Elgar’s post-match press conference focused on his thoughts on the pitch, starting with the first question.

“Let’s not waste any time,” Elgar said with a hollow laugh. “You’ve got to ask yourself — is that a good advertisement for our format? Thirty-four wickets in two days; a pretty one-sided affair I would say. We want to see the game go to four or five days.

“The nature of how it started to play, with some seriously steep bounce with the old ball, you’re on a hiding to nothing as a batting unit. Only three batsmen applied themselves half decently and scored runs. I don’t think that was a very good Test wicket.”

Travis Head’s 92 in the first innings proved the matchwinning batting performance in a game in which Kyle Verreynne’s 64 was the only other score higher than Temba Bavuma’s 38. Fifteen of the 34 dismissed batters faced 10 or fewer deliveries.

Had Elgar raised his concerns with the umpires, Chris Gaffaney and Rod Tucker? “I did ask the umpires,” he said. “When ‘KG’ got Head out down leg [on Sunday], I said, ‘How long does it go on for before it potentially is unsafe?’ Then Nortjé was bowling those short ones that were flying over our heads. I know the game was dead and buried. It was never to change or put a halt to the game, but that was where the umpires’ discretion comes into play; not us as players.”

Kagiso Rabada had Head caught behind with what became the eighth-last ball of the match, which ended with Anrich Nortjé’s bouncer sailing well over batter Cameron Green and wicketkeeper Verreynne. The ball went all the way to the boundary for five wides, the winning runs.

Did Elgar get an answer from the umpires? “No. There were only a handful of runs left [to get] at that stage, so maybe they thought I was just trying to take the mickey. But it’s not a bad reference point going forward to get a reply. I don’t see it changing anything, but there wasn’t a reply.”

Did he think the pitch was unsafe? “I’m not going to say it was unsafe or it wasn’t safe,” Elgar said, doubtless to avoid the insult of a fine being added to the injury that potentially awaited those who dared bat on the surface.

But he was happy to explain the challenge: “The edges of the divots start to get harder and they become more abrasive because the wicket starts drying out. Back home the wickets are also prone to creating those divots, and it becomes a handful. But generally that only happens later in the game, when those divots start playing quite a big role. This one seemed to start yesterday already.

“I’m not a curator and I wouldn’t know how to prepare a cricket pitch, but it was interesting to see how quickly this one actually did start divotting and how quickly the ball sped up; especially the new ball. Also today the older ball was flying through, which shouldn’t be really happening. The divots had a big role to play, especially with the sideways movement and then up and down. And then the ball that’s got that steep bounce, which is quite something to face.”

Asked what his players would do with their three bonus days off, Elgar said: “The guys know their games well enough, and hitting another 100 or 200 balls a day is not going to make you a better cricketer. It’s just one of those games where you’ve failed. I’d rather see the guys not do anything until we get to Melbourne [where the second Test starts next Monday]. Other guys might feel they need to go and do stuff, and I’m sure the coaching staff will give them the best opportunity to be ready for the next Test.”

What changes to their team might the South Africans envisage, what with Theunis de Bruyn and Heinrich Klaasen the spare batters in a squad that also includes uncapped pace threat Gerald Coetzee? “All options are on the table,” Elgar said. “But you still have to go away and give your batters the confidence and the positivity. The guys in the changeroom have played enough cricket to know that this was maybe one of those instances where … let’s be honest and let’s be real about what’s just happened. It’s not like our guys were throwing wickets away. We were getting absolutely jaffaed out really. And [Australia] bowled properly. You’ve got to take all of that into consideration.

“Coming into this game our batters were confident. We prepared bloody well and we played the warm-up game where most of the guys got good runs and time in the middle. So it’s not like the confidence is low. We just need to be realistic around what’s just happened, and try and rectify it. We do have extra days now where the guys need to tap into their mental spaces, which is your biggest enemy at the moment because you can really withdraw yourself from what’s happened instead of facing it and learning from it.”

Despite losing South Africa ended the match on a high — and with an eye on the last two Tests — by dismissing Usman Khawaja, David Warner, Steve Smith and Head inside seven overs as Australia homed in on their nominal target.

“It was to try and see if we could open some old scars; purely bringing our intensity and maybe get them three or four down and those batters going into Melbourne with maybe a little bit less confidence,” Elgar said. “I guess it was one of the gameplans that worked out for us over the last two days. Can’t say there were many, but at least that one did.”

He hoped the performance of Rabada, who took 4/13 in the second innings, could “inspire our batting unit to get their heads right and knuckle down”.

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What’s for breakfast? Horror or hope?

“When you get a wicket with the first ball of the innings, and when it’s a big wicket like David Warner’s, that lifts everyone up.” – Kyle Verreynne

Telford Vice / Cape Town

SOUTH Africans who woke up to the horror of their men’s team being beaten by the Netherlands at the T20 World Cup last month arose to another awfulness on Saturday: the Test side dismissed for 152 in 48.2 overs.

They saw a green Gabba pitch cast a lurid light in the early morning gloom, and learnt that Australia had won the toss and declined to bat. How much of a factor was that in what had happened? Then they watched the highlights and realised that, while there was some seam movement and the bounce could have been more consistent, conditions were fairer than they looked. Closer to the truth was that the T20 World Cup bubble hadn’t burst. It was another nightmare on Aussie street.

Of Saturday’s XI, only Temba Bavuma, Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortjé were part of the team who dawdled, dithered and dwindled to defeat against the Dutch. That happened in Adelaide, some 1,600 kilometres to the south-east of Brisbane, and in starkly different circumstances. Bavuma responded to concerns about his state of mind and his elbow by batting through three partnerships, including a stand of 98 with Kyle Verreynne — who showed discipline and dash in his 64 — that saved South Africa from ignominy, for two solid hours.

But, like wildfires and viruses, these things have a way of leaping even the most imposing boundaries. As hands plopped bread into toasters, the thought crossed more than a few minds that Adelaide was rudely alive and unfortunately well and had bloody well made the trip to Brisbane.

The idea was still banging around as coffee was being brewed. Not for the first time it would be up to the bowlers to keep South Africa in the game. Whistles went on kettles and toasters popped with Rabada at the top of his run, staring down the barrel at David Warner.

It had to be Warner. Of course it did. Long before March 2018, when he launched himself verbally and then physically at Quinton de Kock at Kingsmead and directed the ball-tampering plot that was exposed at Newlands, Warner has served, no doubt unwittingly, as a talisman for South Africa’s players.

Also at Newlands, in an ODI in October 2016, Imran Tahir viscerally channelled his adopted nation’s undying dislike of Warner, for them the ultimate ugly Aussie. First Tahir delivered a furious flurry of words from the bowling crease. Then he unleashed a throw of wonder from the deep to run Warner out. Tahir couldn’t be called a calm cricketer but he blazed with rare passion that night. Warner is to cricketminded South Africans what a lit match is to a braai loaded with kindling and wood.

As Faf du Plessis wrote in Faf: Through Fire, “… no player roused the dog in me more easily than David Warner. It wasn’t necessarily personal. It was rather his behaviour on the field that enabled me to intensify my focus. The way he climbed into me at the Adelaide Oval in 2012 just strengthened my resolve when the team needed me most.

“In all my years of playing against Australia, Warner sledged me the most. That made it easy for me to focus on just one player in order to enter the mental zone I needed to perform optimally. Against other sides, I had to make a real effort to identify an opponent who could serve as a stand-in for David Warner … someone who could get my blood boiling and my focus zoned in. It’s amusing to look back now on the lengths I went to to replicate the feelings I had when playing against Australia. Australia, however, unlocked the fighter in me, and Warner in particular, did this just by breathing.”

Rabada took a breath of his own, loped in on bespoke liquid air, and let loose a delivery bound for Warner’s throat. The left-hander managed to put the splice of his fending bat in the way, and it looked as if he had done enough for the ball to loop over short leg. Khaya Zondo, not the tallest at a touch under six feet, rose and rose and rose some more to pluck the catch, return to earth, and applaud for all his worth — not his and Rabada’s good work but South Africa striking back at the first opportunity. To do so by ridding the scene of Warner, who on his walk back to the dressing room jerked his head around as if he had copped a shard of the flavour of flak he likes to dish out, is as good as it gets.

“When you get bowled out for 152, as much as you want to get the energies up it is quite difficult,” Verreynne told a press conference. “So when you get a wicket with the first ball of the innings, and when it’s a big wicket like David Warner’s, that lifts everyone up.”

Australia also lost Marnus Labuschagne and Usman Khawaja to Marco Jansen and Nortjé inside the first 10 overs. Khawaja’s dismissal was completed slickly at third slip by Simon Harmer, who was on the field while Lungi Ngidi was having strapping applied. That reduced the home side to 27/3, which had a familiar ring to it because South Africa had slumped to the same score on their way to 27/4 inside the first hour. As the visitors had done, the Australians leaned heavily on one partnership: the 117 shared by Steve Smith and Travis Head.

“For the next 10 overs [after Warner’s dismissal] we carried that energy and adrenaline,” Verreynne said. “That set us up nicely, but we fell away for the next 10 overs.” Nortjé and Jansen bowled scoreless overs in the 5.4 after Khawaja went, a time of rasping aggression by the bowlers that yielded five scoring shots and 19 runs. The next five overs went for exactly twice as many runs.

Nortjé steered a sniping scrambled-seam inswinger into Smith’s stumps five balls before stumps, and Rabada ended the day by having Scott Boland, chasing widely, caught behind. “We’re still behind the game, but those two wickets have opened a window for us,” Verreynne said.

Australia will resume seven runs behind and banking on Head, who has the manner of an especially enterprising street-fighter, to add significantly to his 78. Most importantly, they will want to avoid the kind of crash that claimed South Africa’s last six wickets for 27. On a pitch that is expected to gain pace overnight, and given the quality of South Africa’s attack, a collapse seems more probable than possible. As Verreynne said: “Any score we get there’s a bit of belief that our bowlers can do a job.”

Belief? That’s too much for Verreynne to expect from his compatriots as they shuffle on sleepy legs, careful not to stub their toes, through the dawny dregs of Saturday night and turn on televisions to see what Sunday has brought for breakfast. Instead of belief try hope — that South Africa are batting again, that at least one of their top three is still there, that the lead is decent, and that most of Saturday’s play was nothing more than a bad dream. But first, coffee.

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Prepare for drama Down Under

“For us, mentally, it’s about cricket – what is required for us to come here and win.” – Malibongwe Maketa hopes the focus stays on the field in Australia.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

“WE know what you did last month,” South Africa’s players can be sure of hearing, laced with appropriate profanities, from their opponents during the Test series that starts at the Gabba next Saturday.

Six members of South Africa’s current squad were party to the unthinkable in Adelaide 31 days ago, when they were in the XI who lost to the Netherlands and consequently crashed out of the men’s T20 World Cup. Two more who were in that mournful dressing room, as travelling reserves, are back in Australia.

How will Malibongwe Maketa, the visitors’ interim coach, make Temba Bavuma, Marco Jansen, Heinrich Klaasen, Keshav Maharaj, Lungi Ngidi, Anrich Nortjé, Kagiso Rabada and Lizaad Williams concentrate on what lies ahead rather than what is in the still raw, recent past? Especially when they have the Australians in their ear doing the opposite?

“It’s totally different formats and we have made sure that, mentally and physically, the guys have had a longer break,” Maketa told reporters from Brisbane on Tuesday, a reference to Bavuma and Rabada not playing domestic cricket before the tour. “Now that we’re here the focus is on how we are going to go about winning this series.

“The players who were here during the World Cup have contributed in terms of [discussing] the conditions, albeit that they were T20 conditions. We have been challenging them to make sure they are putting their energy into the team, which is what they’ve done. Test cricket brings different pressures and the mental switch has definitely happened, and earlier than we expected. The energy that we’ve received from them has been positive.”

New as Maketa is in his position — he was appointed on November 2 having served as Ottis Gibson’s assistant from August 2017 until July 2019 — he will know that a Test series in Australia is about more than cricket. In November 2012 it was about a dossier the Australians allegedly had compiled on their opponents that, on cursory inspection, read more like lightly edited sections of Mickey Arthur’s autobiography than anything revelatory or insightful. Four years later it was about the intimate relationship between Faf du Plessis, the mints in his mouth, and the ball.

The off-field stakes have been raised incrementally since South Africa completed their first ever Test series victory in Australia in January 2009, no doubt because they have followed that success with two more. It’s not that the Australian press favours the home side, who are invariably held to a far higher standard than opponents — as was proved again during the 2018 ball-tampering scandal. Rather, a highly competent and competent media don’t hold back. Deference is a dirty word. Every angle is explored and exploited to the full, and to a degree not often reached in South Africa.

Good luck trying to dissuade Australian reporters from writing about a change being forced in the batting order after Kyle Verreynne’s grandfather suffered a heart attack in the stands — as South Africa’s team management tried to do, unsuccessfully, when that happened during the Lord’s Test in August. Similarly, Dean Elgar’s assertion last week that the recalled Theunis de Bruyn had “gone through a lot of personal things which I’ll never speak of” is sure to be revisited in Australia if De Bruyn is picked, and particularly if he does well. How might Maketa manage that challenge?

“It’s difficult, but our experience tells us each series has had its own hiccups. For us, mentally, it’s about cricket — what is required for us to come here and win. That’s been the driving force. We’ve got enough personnel and support to make sure we deal with whatever situation we might encounter.”

For now, Maketa appears intent on forging the important bond with Elgar: “Our relationship is strong and based on hard work. We’re similar in what we’re looking for in terms of the team and the performance. Like I said to the guys when I joined the team, I’m here to support Dean in every way to make sure that he not only gets what he wants but that he gets the guys onside in terms of performances.”

Maketa attained his level four certificate — the highest qualification in the field in South Africa — since September 2015, and would seem to have a firm grip on his boundaries as a coach: “The only way I can affect the game is through preparation; I know the guys are not liking me at the moment in the sense that we’ve had some really hard [training] sessions. Once the game starts I hand over and the biggest thing then is how do we support the players as a coaching staff. And consistently asking ourselves questions on how we can turn the game around or how we can stay ahead in the game, and giving that information to the players and to Dean to make sure we support them.

“I’m more relaxed when the game starts. I know I’ll be comfortable that we’ve done all the work and everything that’s required for us to go out there and perform. Everything else is down to the players. As a coaching staff, I encourage us not to get in the way of the players but to trust the work that they’ve done and make sure the environment is conducive for them to perform.”

Maketa spoke the day after England had found ways to win in Rawalpindi on a pitch that was the antithesis of the swinging and seaming conditions that helped them claim victory in six of the seven Tests they played at home this year. England beat Pakistan, by 74 runs, on Monday despite the match yielding an aggregate of 1,768 runs, the third most in Test history and the most since 1939. Under coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes, the English could be said to be revolutionising the oldest format of the game. Might South Africa try to emulate them?

“There’s different takes to getting people to the ground,” Maketa said. “We know if you start winning people will come. The Australia of old made their goal scoring around four [runs an over] to make sure they were getting people to the ground, and they were still winning. It was a win-win for them.

“For us, it’s about going out there and winning. We know that, back home, people will support winning teams regardless of what happens. That’s how we’re looking to set out our stall. We want to play good, attractive cricket; brave cricket. But Test cricket is meant to be played for five days. If it means we win in the last session on the fifth day, we’ll take that.”

Maketa should prepare to be reminded that England’s Bazballers did indeed show the patience to win in the last session of the fifth day, and to be asked if he is driving his players too hard — shortly after he spoke, team management said Wednesday’s planned training session had been cancelled. Welcome to Australia, coach.

Cricbuzz

Australia’s tournament, India’s travelling circus

“Not as a team we haven’t. I’ve talked through it a little bit with the coach. We went through it this morning briefly.” – Aaron Finch on whether the Australians had discussed their net runrate reality.

Telford Vice / Adelaide Oval

AUSTRALIANS like to think they’re special, but they shouldn’t this time. If, as anticipated, they don’t reach the play-off stages of the men’s T20 World Cup, they would be nothing more than ordinary. That would be confirmed should England beat Sri Lanka at the SCG on Saturday to pip the Aussies to the semi-finals by dint of net runrate. And they should.

Only three times in the previous seven editions of the tournament have the home side managed to emerge from the group stage. And even then they’ve never advanced past the semi-finals. That means no host has reached a final, let alone won it.

No doubt the benign conditions demanded for T20I cricket, relative to those deployed in the other formats, have tended to negate home ground advantage. Certainly that counted for little in 2007, 2009, 2014 and 2021, when South Africa, England, Bangladesh and India failed to advance to the knockout rounds despite playing in their own backyards — albeit that last year the tournament was moved to the still subcontinental surfaces of Oman and the United Arab Emirates because of Covid complications.

Also, the T20 World Cup isn’t taken seriously enough to pierce the public consciousness to the extent that organisers and sponsors would like, with the possible exception of when it’s played in Asia. Thus the home side feels less support, and concurrently less pressure to succeed, than they might during an ODI World Cup or an important Test series.

Australians not directly connected to cricket don’t seem to know enough about the competition to care. More than halfway through the tournament, reporters covering it on the ground are still being asked basic questions by cab drivers, barbers and bar staff — what’s it called, when did it start, when does it end, who’s playing? And that despite the fact that the tournament is being given a fair punt in the media. Fourteen of the total of 45 matches are on free-to-air television, including all of Australia’s games and the semis and final. That marks the first time in more than four years that Australians have been able to watch their team on television without needing a subscription.

Does that help explain why the home side have not drawn bigger crowds? The 48,000-capacity SCG was decently full for Australia’s first game, against New Zealand, with 34,756 in attendance. But that sank to 25,061 when they played Sri Lanka in Perth’s 60,000-seater stadium. Only 18,869 were at the Gabba — where the capacity for cricket is 36,000 — to see the Aussies play Ireland. Australia’s biggest crowd, 37,565, didn’t see any cricket at all: they were sprinkled lightly around the 100,000-seater MCG watching rain fall long enough to wash out the match against England entirely.

Just 18,672 turned out at Adelaide Oval on a beautiful early summer evening on Friday for the must-win-big match against Afghanistan, and most of them seemed to shout for the Afghans. During the Australian innings, the home fans made the most noise in the penultimate over, when Naveen-ul-Haq aborted his delivery stride and appeared to cast aspersions on how far Kane Richardson was backing up.

The boos directed at Naveen were replaced a minute later by rousing cheers after the fast bowler delivered to Glenn Maxwell and, having fielded a straight drive, turned to throw down the stumps at the non-striker’s end with Richardson well out of his ground. Point made, Afghan fans might say.

Another is that while there is an argument that teams like Sri Lanka, Ireland and Afghanistan are unlikely to reel in the masses in countries like Australia — although they did their bit to gather expatriates and travelling supporters — do Aussies not want to watch their own team play in the flesh?

This seeming indifference would appear to extend to the players. Asked during a press conference on Thursday if he and his charges had discussed in detail what would be required of them against Afghanistan, Aaron Finch sounded at best mealy-mouthed and at worst disinterested: “Not as a team we haven’t. I’ve talked through it a little bit with the coach. We went through it this morning briefly. You still have to earn the right to be able to push for a net runrate because the last thing that you want to happen is you push too hard, you compromise the two points, and then potentially something happened in the Sri Lanka-England game and you leave yourself vulnerable. But, yeah, there’s obviously some scenarios there that we need to keep an eye on throughout the game.”

Doesn’t exactly make you want to rush out and buy a ticket, does it? Or even spend three or so hours of a beautiful evening watching Finch’s team on the box. Maybe it’s who you support that answers that question, rather than what the captain says.

The smallest crowd for an India match, the 29,302 who saw them play Bangladesh in Adelaide, was more than three-quarters the size of Australia’s biggest. All of 90,293 were at the MCG to take in world cricket’s biggest occasion, any game between India and Pakistan. Perth was packed with 44,251 to see India play South Africa, and 36,426 were on hand for the match against the Netherlands — surely a Dutch record.

Although not all of them would have been urging on Australia or India, a total of 200,272 people have flocked to India’s four matches, while Australia’s five games collected 134,923. That’s 65,149 more fans — fewer than 10,000 short of double the Aussies’ biggest attendance — going to India’s games despite them having played one fewer game. And one fewer than the home side, no less.

Maybe the most relevant number is that Australia’s population of 25.74-million goes into India’s 1.393-billion more than 54 times. Australia has only 1.85% of India’s number of people. India is special, and not only by weight of numbers. When they play cricket, even in a tournament that prompts ambivalence in people from other countries, the world watches.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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