South Africa v England, 4th Test, Day 4: Moeen’s Finest Series, England’s Puzzle

 

South Africa v England, 4^th Test, Day 4: Moeen’s Finest Series, England’s Puzzle

August 7^th 2017

England now have just three Tests against a second-string West Indies before the Ashes. And, despite a convincing 3-1 series win, some significant issues.

The Test series was won thanks mainly to the runs of Root, Bairstow and Stokes (and, to a lesser degree, those of Cook and Moeen) and to the wickets of Ali and Anderson.

·       Between them, Ali and Anderson managed 45 wickets; Broad, Stokes, Dawson and Wood together, just 28.

·       England had three of the top four run-scorers of the series in Root, Bairstow and Stokes. Bairstow managed 330 runs on his own (more than 130 fewer than Root); Jennings, Ballance, Westley and Malan just 369 between them.

Although this was very much a team effort, some team members supplied much more to the win than others.

All in all though, with 25 wickets and 252 runs in a 4-Test series, this was a series win built around Moeen Ali’s gigantic contributions. Statistically, Moeen’s feat has been one of the greatest ever series by an all-rounder and he has produced numbers that even Sir Garfield Sobers would have envied.

While Jennings, Westley and Malan was struggling to convert starts, Alex Hales was crashing a brutal 218 and Haseeb Hameed made his first 50 of the season. Hameed will not come into contention against the West Indies because he needs more runs and more confidence first, but surely Hales will, with Malan’s #5 spot looking very vulnerable. Malan’s run of 1, 10, 18 & 6 has been bitterly disappointing to the fans who have seen him bat so well for Middlesex in a stuttering batting order.

Westley’s good start has been undermined slightly since, but he has had only 2 Tests and while 25, 59, 29 & 9 is not a rip-roaring success, it is hardly total failure either. The frustration is that with Ballance’s 20, 34, 27 & 4, the England #3 has reached 20 in 6 of the 8 innings of the series, yet just one of those starts has become a 50 and even that one did not get much further.

Reports are that Ballance and Woakes are unlikely to be  ready to play the 1^st Test v the West Indies and the Dawson theory of spin success has been shown to be up the creek, so there are not such a wide range of options available. Alex Hales must come under consideration for Malan’s #5 spot, although Division 2 runs against Derbyshire are not a guarantee of Test success, as Ben Duckett showed. Similarly, Mark Stoneman must think that it is now or never, but his career average of under 35 does count against him. Apologists who say that he made those runs at Chester-le-Street and that they should thus count as many more, forget that Keaton Jennings also made his runs at Chester-le-Street – and made more of them at a better average! Jennings has batted far better in the last two Tests and may just hang on: he has been unfortunate that an amazing 12 months of form ended in the run-up to the South Africa series.

With just one round of CC matches before the 1^st Test squad is picked, there is not a whole lot of time for contenders to make a case. It was also Malan and Westley’s misfortune to go straight from T20 into a Test and one place where South Africa made consistently a searching examination was with the new ball.

What of South Africa? Their tour has been a pretty awful one: lost the ODIs 2-1, with only a consolation win in the third match; went out of the Champions Trophy with only a win v Sri Lanka; lost the T20 series 2-1, their only win coming thanks to an unexplainable England meltdown; lost the Tests 3-1.

There have been some odd selections – playing a sick Philander in the 3^rd Test was a dreadful mistake. Players missing: AB de Villiers and Dale Steyn were particularly missed. And players in patchy form: Morkel, Rabada, Maharaj & Philander all did well, but they missed a magical standout performance with the ball; while, for all his 329 runs, Amla did not make a century in the series and was not the imposing figure of old. Dean Elgar made South Africa’s only century, in a losing cause and only Philander, Amla and Elgar averaged over 33 through the series.

Statistically, wherever you look, England dominated:

·       Two of the three centuries in the series

·       Four of the top five scores

·       Three of the top four runs aggregates

·       The top two wicket-takers in the series

While the number of 50s on either side was evenly split – England shaded it 16-14 – the South African batsmen just failed too often to push on to make a match-changing score.

South Africa have found a spinner in Maharaj who will serve them for years to come and the fast bowling stocks look good – at 22, Rabada should lead the attack for the next decade – but the batting will need renewal. Amla is reaching the end of his career. Faf du Plessis is no longer the rock on which monumental acts of defiance were built, is 33 and has a very disappointing series and du Kock hardly got a run when it mattered. De Kock showed immense skill with the gloves, taking some blinding catches, but seemed to be batting far too high.

All in all though there seemed to be a failure on the South African side to face the facts. Listening to Graeme Smith on commentary, he had so much to say about the failures of the opposition, but very little about the failures of the side that he had led until recently and that was losing the series badly. South Africa have had two years of shocking lack of success and really need to arrest the decline before it gets any worse. England, sad to say, only beat a very moderate South Africa and are nowhere near as good as tis win looks on paper.