These days only two things are certain about Paul Adams. The first is that he will hook a nasty fast bowler en route to a boisterous 12, and look marvellous doing it. The second is that once an over he will drag his Chinaman down short, probably at leg-stump and straight into the sweet spot of grateful heave through midwicket.
His post-lunch spell on the last day at the Iqbal stadium was exceptionally awful, despite the inexplicable praise pouring stuck-record-like from Mark Boucher. Graeme Smith, like his deputy, seemed to be following a match in cloud cuckooland, one where diabolical Gogga was turning it square and beating the bat at will, while back in Faisalabad Robin Peterson — with 1/6 in 10 overs — counted vultures and cleaned his fingernails in the outfield.
In the end only Boeta Dippenaar emerged from the final day’s ham-fisted somnambulism with any credit. Entrenched at short leg as Adams fed Inzamam-ul-Haq sherbet, peeled grapes and full tosses, the brave Free Stater survived the cricketing equivalent of being carpet-bombed for 12 hours and still had the grace to smile and give the odd clap. Someone with more imagination and less resolve would have bolted, or thrashed Adams senseless.
Peterson’s return — with three men around the bat and two nicks in his first over — once again asked the old questions about the emperor’s not-so-new clothes, the mantle of strike bowler worn by Adams for so long.
For years his prodigal tendencies have been forgiven as coming with the territory. Strike bowlers give away runs. You know, the way Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath get carted about at five an over. Forgive and forget, the attitude has always been, because any second now the kid will rip one from outside leg-stump and uproot off.
But two nerveless men near the bat, their shins laid down on the altar of the full toss, and wickets bought with long-hops or donated by over-eager batsmen do not a strike bowler make. With the least-effective googly in international cricket, and the revs on his stock delivery reduced for the sake of control, Adams is struggling to be mediocre.
The magnificent schoolboy freak of 1995, carrying all our naive hopes of upstaging the monster Warne, is long gone and should not have his misery prolonged.
The refusal of the Adams myth to die is a reminder of the tenacity of cricket’s factoids, unsubstantiated fragments that become accepted as gospel, traded as currency in the great marketplace of cricket lore: Ricky Ponting is dodgy early on to straight deliveries; Matthew Hayden can be bounced out; Jacques Kallis can’t hook.
It fills column inches and fires the imaginations of those of us who secretly believe we know what the players don’t. Usually these gems are five seasons out of date, once true for a Test series or two until players and coaches ironed out the problem. But sometimes they are based on absolutely nothing.
Take Shaun Pollock. The Word on Pollock, unable to dismiss outright so great a player, has instead become patronising. He’s lost a yard of pace, the Word insists, can’t quite get it through any more, doesn’t have a bouncer, can’t swing it like he used to. But — and this is the heart-warming part — he makes up for all this with control. Aw, ain’t that lovely. In short, Pollock is the plain girl with the nice personality.
Yet this same trundling medium-pacer (now regarded by many as Makhaya Ntini’s straight man), since being relieved of the captaincy at the beginning of the year, has quietly maintained a strike-rate equal to that of the murderous string-bean Curtly Ambrose and has undermined Joel Garner’s iconic average of 20,97 runs per wicket.
No man can live below 20,97, cricket’s traditionalists held, hypothesising that the human brain would liquefy in the sub-20,95 region. But Pollock’s cricket mind is as lucid as ever.
Certainly, the shoulders droop and the big feet drag a little as he walks back to his mark, but they did that when he was 19. Stop thinking Alan Donald minus three yards of pace. Instead try McGrath with the batting average of Neil McKenzie.
Pakistan are worthy and dull victors in a worthy and dull series, and coach Javed Miandad has been exercising his bragging rights, pronouncing that Pakistan can beat anyone: Australia, Godzilla, the 101st Airborne Division— Indeed he should gather rosebuds while he may, for Pakistan’s selectors are as consistent as Stalin with a migraine.
First innings centurion Imran Farhat will lie awake thinking of the horde of young century-makers excommunicated after four or five Tests, such as Ali Naqvi. Who? He made 115 on debut against South Africa in 1997, stroking Donald, Brett Schultz, Pollock and Kallis to all parts. Four Tests later he was gone, purged by committee.
Now let’s forget about the whole drab, fumble-fingered affair. Except for the part about Adams. Not again.