The test series against India has once again revived all that is magical about cricket
Cricket: Jon Swift
THE last fortnight has shown that perhaps the greatest thing about this wonderful game of cricket is that it constantly redefines the parameters that ordinarily constrain the edges of sporting excellence.
How else would you define the magic of Sachin Tendulkar denying the restrictions of his individual altitude above the turf to turn in an innings of such cricketing class in the first innings of a second test when, facing the monolith of a 500-plus total to chase on a Newlands wicket, the ko`l, as the old Afrikaans saying goes, was already a long time deur die kerk?
Or, for that matter, the imperious manner in which Mohammad Azharuddin dismantled the fearsome South African seam attack in an innings that is among the finest ever played at Newlands? Azhar has the wristy disdain for the good of all that has ever been the stamp of India’s great batsmen, and the little master Sunil Gavaskar – by any measure a cricketing great – must have taken heart from his position in the commentary box that the legacy he left behind will live on.
With Tendulkar at the other end, the 222 partnership produced a brief moment of all that is glorious about the great old game. Interestingly, it will probably be this collision of cricketing genius, after half the side had been sent packing for a miserly 58 runs, that will live in the minds longer than the actual result.
And, for many, probably overshadow the sheer guts and graft of Gary Kirsten’s century after his disappointments of 2×2 in the Kingsmead test, as well as the control of Brian Macmillan in forging a three- figure total that underlined his mastery of the craft. Macmillan’s century was – as his Man of the Match award at Newlands rightly testifies to – the pivot on which the series finally swung.
The big man came good when he had to. Like Andrew Hudson – a touch off form but still prepared to guts it out for two match- winning half centuries at Kingsmead – and his opening partner Kirsten, the business of batting it out against the class seam bowling of Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad became a contrasting study in equal measures of determination and derring-do.
But then there was the Lance Klusener century, an innings that owed more to the young man’s inherent and refreshing belief that the ball is there to be disposed of than it did to the structured tenets of WG Grace’s legacy of playing each delivery on its merits.
Simply unforgettable. Klusener has fully justified in just three tests the decision of the national selectors. The pugnacious Klusener, who, while he spots young Adam Bacher some three years and Paul Adams nearly five on the calendar, is equally a tyro to the test arena.
Yet, in two brief spells of magic he has become the best debutant bowler for this country with his second innings 8/64 in Calcutta and the fastest centurion South Africa has produced with his 102 off just 100 balls.
It was a spell of play that removed the dourness that can so often typify test cricket, and made the whole thing fun again. But such are the vagaries of a game that defies logic, that the wheel had to turn … as it duly did when Klusener took the ball to attack Tendulkar and Azharuddin.
Still, you have to admire Klusener’s cricketing make-up. This was never more evident than when Azharuddin took him for four fours in the opening over after lunch on the monumental second day at Newlands. If Klusener could have used a fan, he probably would have.
But he stuck at it – thanks to the tolerance and faith of a piece of superb captaincy in adversity by Hansie Cronje. Even Eddie Barlow at his most belligerent would have approved.
Like Klusener, Bacher represents a full and fruitful future. A close-to-the-bat fielder that most captains can only dream of – witness his staggeringly sharp, thinking run-out of Srinath at Kingsmead – there is also the feeling that he will score a great many more test runs than his uncle Ali ever managed.
Bacher was also responsible for a memorable moment in finally getting rid of a dumbstruck Tendulkar for 169 of the best runs ever likely to be witnessed at Newlands with a catch that verged on the theatricality of major league baseball in its execution. It was one of those moments which shouldn’t really have happened … but did.
In passing, it also went to building yet another block in a series that, while the Indians may have already lost the rubber after conceding two matches of the three, had thrown up enough mind-bends to wipe out the less memorable moments that it is equally capable of producing.
In this respect, it is perhaps germane to deviate north of the Limpopo and savour the hat-trick that Eddo Brandes – a part-timer whose advancing years as much as his geographical location make chicken farming a greater priority than international cricket – produced against Mike Atherton’s Englishmen.
Zimbabwe’s destruction of the myth that the inventors of the game can actually play it, is proof positive that the Good Lord allowed the game to be invented for the ritual summer slaughter of the Brits and, in essence, that, despite the obligatory boundary ropes, there are no edges to this particular brand of sporting endeavour.
If there were, how would you really quantify the pace, control and psychological power over the opposing batsmen that Allan Donald has developed over the years? His art has been distilled into an alchemy with the ball in his hand that has all the hallmarks of the type of myth and mystery that surround the great names of yesteryear.
At 30, one would expect his talent to be on the wane. Clearly this is not the case. The deliveries he produced to dismiss Tendulkar at Kingsmead and the elegant left-hander Saurav Ganguly at Newlands were perhaps the finest of his long career.
So, too, with 37-year-old veteran Dave Richardson. He has shouldered the burden of a brittle top order for more tests than he would probably care to remember and seldom failed.
It was heartening then that the old man of the side’s sole stumping in a distinguished test career should have been handed to him by a teenager with an action that is an anathema to every spin bowling textbook ever written.
When Prasad danced down the wicket to Adams and left Richardson with little more to do than lift the bails, it symbolically forged the links between all that has been good about the national side in the past and everything that is to be expected of it in the future.
Quite rightly, Hansie Cronje has warned not to take the Indians lightly – and certainly they are an eminently better advertisement for the game than Atherton’s sorry English assortment – but even on the clearest of days in South Africa, there can be few sides capable of taking on this country’s cricketing elite.
For, in everything, they have tried and tried hard. And this is what stretches the sporting borders. This is what elevates the ordinary to the excellent. We have indeed been privileged to watch it.