South Africa v England: 3rd Test, Day 3
Tales of the Unexpected: South Africa the
Horizontal Heavyweight, or “Vini. Vidi. Vici.”
January 18th
2016
After a fair part of the final session was lost on Day 2 probably most people thought that, with the match cracking along, there would be a result some time on Day 5 or, just possibly, late on Day 4 if there was a clatter of wickets at some point. What no one expected was that the match would be wound up long before the scheduled end of Day 3.
Clatter of wickets there was: no fewer than eighteen in the day. What no one expected was for South Africa to come out like an enraged fighter, determined to gain a first round knock-out, only to end up flat on their collective back doing an excellent imitation of the horizontal heavyweight with a glass chin, sleeping off peacefully on the canvas the encounter with his opponent.
For much of the morning it looked as if South Africa had things under control. Joe Root fell quickly. Moeen Ali added some quick runs but, when he fell, at 279-7, with the South African bowlers looking menacing, it looked as if South Africa would establish a small lead and, with England batting last, had a real chance to build an impregnable position: most people seemed to think that anything over 250 would be a testing target and 220 would give South Africa a real chance. The South African fans were crowing: it looked as if there was every chance that the series would be level at the end of the Test.
What happened initially was a slow change in momentum. With England under real pressure, Jonny Bairstow and Stuart Broad accumulated runs, but the aim was parity, not the lead of 50-80 that many fans believed would be necessary to compensate for batting last. England staggered into the lead but, with the last three wickets falling for fourteen, any dreams of a significant lead were blown away by Rabada and Morkel. However, England had a lead – that had looked unlikely half an hour before – and South Africa had to clear it before building a lead themselves.
With Elgar and van Zyl looking confident, the arrears were erased before Lunch. One ball from Stuart Broad screamed past Elgar. Another from Jimmy Anderson caught him a nasty blow, but the impression was that, as on the first morning, the new ball was being wasted and that Alistair Cook had erred seriously by not giving it to Steve Finn. One South African fan talked about batting through to Tea on Day four and setting 400-450.
Here the value of a good coach came in. Five overs bowled. The ball still new. The senior bowlers not quite getting it right. The deficit still small.
Being Australian, being rude to England players is, one suspects, part of the coach’s DNA. One can assume that the text of his lunchtime pep talk was not “hey, Stuart darling, you need to pitch it up a bit more; see if you can’t for Uncle Trevor.”
Whatever earthy Anglo-Saxon phrases were used, the effect was electric. Stuart Broad’s spell after Lunch was:
…… .4..W. …1(a drop).. …..W ….W. ..W… ….W. ……
ABdV’s glorious legions may not know that “vini, vidi, vici” is pronounced “weanie, weedy, weaky” but, faced with Vercingetorix Broad, they translated it as “I came, I saw, I conked-out”. It was a bit like watching Obelix have fun with the garrison at Compendium – there was only ever going to be one winner.
What the poor Rabada made of this, one can only speculate. Having put South Africa in an excellent position with his maiden 5-for in the morning, it was only his efforts with the bat at #9 that saved South Africa from making their lowest score since re-admission… just. Even so, 83ao was a pretty pitiful effort.
From the high water mark of 117-1, half way through the afternoon on Day 1, South Africa have contrived to lose 19 wickets for 279 runs. Things have not improved since India; they have got worse.
In military terms, the South African batting through the series has been the typical “crust defence”: break through the crust and what comes behind is pretty soft. Cynics would say that the South African tail starts at #5 these days and that if one of Elgar, de Villiers and Amla does not make a big score, South Africa are in deep trouble. At 31-4, with all three out, one sensed that there was no way back.
Think not that the win means that all is rosy in the England garden. It is far from it. South Africa though have been too inadequate though to exploit it. There was still time for an England collapse and the top three, who have looked about as solid as the South African middle order, all fell trying to knock off 73 runs.
Alex Hales has turned into the gibbering wreck, whose ODI career suddenly floundered in 2014 until he applied the maxim: see ball, hit ball. He is trying to defend without having the game to do it. An opening stand of 64, with Hales hanging in grimly for a red-inker, promised a ten-wicket win that would have done England’s openers a power of good but, as has happened so often, one top-order wicket brought three.
Alistair Cook’s 43 increased his series average from 12 to the dizzy heights of 17.2. And Nick Compton’s attempt to finish the match with an aggressive shot produced the same result that every attempt he has made at aggression all series. A sequence of scores of 85, 49, 45, 15, 26, 0 shows a downward progression that has to be broken in the 4th Test.
Yes, England are good, but they are not going to get away with being 40-3, 50-3 or 70-3 in innings after innings for very long.
However, the pressure that South Africa have been put under through the series shows in one telling statistic: England have batted five overs fewer than South Africa in the series, but have scored over four hundred runs more. Despite two second innings aberrations, England have averaged 3.7 runs per over – South Africa have scored at 2.8. In no innings in the series so far have South Africa matched England’s run rate. England have given their bowlers time to work. South Africa have always being struggling to hang on.
South Africa can bemoan the injuries to key bowlers, but it is the batsmen who have let them down. Bavuma, might have score a superb century in the 2nd Test, but has managed just 33 runs in his other four innings. Hashim Amla scored 201, but has just 64 in his other four innings. Faf du Plessis scored 86 with conditions in his favour, but has only 41 in his other four innings. And poor old van Zyl must be looking enviously at the averages of Cook and Hales in this series as unimaginable riches. A measure of how bad things have been is that England fans look at Nick Compton’s record in the series and suggest that it is not good enough, but his figures are almost identical to AB de Villiers, who is seen as one of the successes for South Africa. Sometimes perspective can be cruel.
Day 3 to England
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