I have a confession to make. Shortly before Graeme Smith took his team to England, Kevin McCallum from The Star and I were invited on to Mike Haysman’s Extra Cover programme to burble on about South Africa’s prospects for the tour.
Hindsight has treated us more kindly than we might have expected. Both of us had had dealings with Smith subsequent to his accession to the captaincy and both of us thought he’d be up to the job. We also both nominated Andrew ‘Freddie†Flintoff as the Englishman who might be able to produce something out of the ordinary.
At the end of the show, however, Haysman went for the jugular: what, he asked, would be the outcome of the Test series? McCallum picked a South African win, but I was nowhere near as confident. To be honest, I couldn’t see this side succeeding where Kepler Wessels’s and Hansie Cronje’s teams had stumbled. In fact, I thought South Africa would do well to lose the series narrowly.
But that’s not the sort of thing you say on television if you want to avoid being accosted by belligerent supporters in pubs for the next few weeks. So I copped out and offered a draw as my prediction.
So as it turns out, I was not only correct in one sense, but pleasantly surprised in another. To have drawn a five-match rubber that seemed to have been in the bag four days before the end of the series is a massive disappointment, for Smith and his team and for their supporters.
But we should not let this detract from what was in many respects an excellent tour. The aftershocks of the World Cup campaign have died away and the spectre of Cronje, which has loomed over the team for more than three years, has now been firmly laid to rest.
South Africa didn’t quite last the pace, losing their momentum at a critical stage to allow England back into the series. There is no doubt that England played the better cricket during the middle three days of the Oval Test match, but Smith and his team will know that England played well because they were allowed to by the South Africans.
If circumstances had been different earlier in the series, if it hadn’t rained at Edgbaston or Smith had won the toss at Trent Bridge, South Africa might have had it all wrapped up before the Oval. If there is an important lesson to be learned, it is simply that Australia don’t relax before a series is safely tucked up and fast asleep in bed.
The positives of the England tour, though, surely far outweigh the disappointment of its climax. The senior South African players, Jacques Kallis, Shaun Pollock, Gary Kirsten, Mark Boucher, Herschelle Gibbs and Makhaya Ntini, all made significant contributions at one stage or another.
Gibbs, of course, has been roundly condemned for getting out at a bad time at the Oval with a careless shot. It was a moment of recklessness, but perhaps it is also necessary to accept that for all his natural fitness, Gibbs does not have endless reserves of stamina.
If he bats for a long time he gets tired, he gets careless and he gets out. Quite how you transform a sprinter into a marathoner is hard to say, but if he learns to cope with the middle distances, he will probably become more reliable.
Some technical failings were exposed as the series wore on. Both Smith and Jacques Rudolph were found out trying to play around their front pads. But these flaws can be rectified in the nets.
Gary Kirsten is a prime example of a batsman who has adjusted to playing straighter in the later stages of his career and has score all the more runs for the adjustment.
Paul Adams had a disappointing series and some of the old faults still remain. But he remains South Africa’s leading spinner and while Robin Peterson has promise, he is still a few years off being the finished article. With Nicky Boje still out injured, Claude Henderson might be worth consideration when the selectors announce the side to go to Pakistan, probably this weekend.
In many respects the Pakistan tour is a trip South Africa could well do without just at the moment and it will be a test of Smith’s abilities as a leader, as well as Eric Simons’s management, to get the South Africans going again after a physically and emotionally draining tour.
Overall, though, the 2003 tour of England must be counted a success. The captain may still have much to learn in terms of tactical sophistication, but, at 22, you would hardly expect him to have the nous of a Steve Waugh. What Smith clearly possesses, though, is the ability to inspire.
What was clearly apparent throughout the Test series was the sense of enjoyment with which the South Africans played their cricket. They looked a happy, close-knit team on the field and, by all accounts, behaved impeccably off it.
It has been some time since we have been able to say that of a South African team.