Neil Manthorp Cricket
The worst possible news for England became the best thing that could have happened to Dominic Cork during the first Test. Darren Gough’s broken finger was the result of crass thinking from the dressing room.
Amazingly, Alec Stewart declared after the match that his team had “played risky and daring cricket” and then said that they would continue to do more of the same for the rest of the series.
This is very good news for South Africa. Facing Allan Donald in poor light at the end of a grey day is, indeed, very risky. So risky, in fact, that it earned Gough a broken right index finger and put him out of the rest of the Edgbaston Test and the next two as well.
It was good news for Cork, however, because he was forced to bowl within himself in the knowledge that he and Angus Fraser would have to share Gough’s workload.
Cork is an effervescent, ebullient man with an infectiously competitive nature; he is also prone to the odd bout of sulky petulance and worse. When England recalled him, it was described as a risk. Not so much because of his cricketing ability, but because, temperamentally, he might destabilise the dressing room in the first match under a new captain and in the first Test of a five match series.
So there he was at Edgbaston, recalled to the England team after an absence of 18 months, with an injured body and an injured pride, suffered during a messy and public divorce and much slagging off amongst former and current team mates.
But Dominic Cork was as fired up as a steamtrain boiler attempting a speed record.
Then suddenly Gough had broken his finger. The impact of this would have taken a couple of minutes to sink in, but when it did Cork realised what it meant.
Instead of trying to prove himself all over again, instead of having to take wickets just to stay in the side, he took the new ball in the knowledge that there was no one to outshine him.
So Cork used his brain. And he took five wickets. And scored some runs. And most unusually of all, he flatly avoided the temptation to return some of Lance Klusener’s jibes – as spiky as they were.
In many ways, the opposite emotions applied to South Africa’s opening pair, Donald and Pollock. Without ever threatening the emotional extremes that Cork is capable of, both men were, unquestionably, too eager to succeed.
Home ground, first Test, and the mountains of newsprint dedicated to their class and stature within the team. Inevitably, it seems, because they were routinely installed as the match-winners and the difference between the teams, they bowled like drains.
But that is fine; they deserve that luxury. It is true, they are routinely match-winners, and to fail because you are trying too hard is the most forgiveable of all sporting failures. They will not suffer the same fate at Lords. They simply forgot how to relax in Birmingham. Not again.
Relaxation was the key to the two men who saved South Africa from defeat. Klusener has assumed the role adopted by Fanie de Villiers four years ago – chief “Pom- hater”.
He has matured into an international cricketer of rare composure. His innings of 57 in the eighth wicket stand of 104 with Jonty Rhodes might easily be one of the crucial moments of the series.
Easily. Steve Waugh has toured England on no less than four Ashes tours; he knows what makes the English team tick, and he knows that they had to win at Edgbaston, the most English of English conditions.
“England must win the first – I can’t see them winning as the summer goes on, with hotter conditions and drier pitches.”
The final reason that South Africa have a great chance of victory at Lords is that Gary Kirsten will score a century.
Barry Richards has been a marvellous presence on tour so far, and one of the anecdotes about him is that he always scored a century when his mother came to watch.
Believe it or not, the Lords Test will be the very first time that Gary Kirsten’s mother will ever have watched him. She is just too nervous.
“Once or twice she has come down to a club game when she’s heard that I’m about 70 not out, then she wanders around and claps when she sees others clapping, and then claps if I get 100.
“But she hasn’t been to watch me in 10 years of playing first class cricket. I said to her before we came on this tour that it was about time she got over this. I told her she was just being plain silly. I said I’d pay for her flight over to London for the Lords test, as long as she promised me that she would watch. After playing at Lords four years ago, I knew there was no bigger occasion in the game. And I really wanted mum to be there.”
Now you see? Of course Gazza will score a hundred, he must do. It’s just too good a story to miss. And another thing; he may not have a quarter of the ability of the other guy who scored centuries for Mum, but he more than matches him for desire.