The last time England beat South Africa in a Test series in South Africa was in 1965. None of the South African team had been born then. Nor, for that matter, had any of the England side.
Shaun Pollock had not yet appeared as a twinkle in Peter’s eye. Ray Jennings was a 10-year-old when MJK Smith’s team clinched the series in Port Elizabeth. Duncan Fletcher was 16.
The sole result of the five-match series came in the first Test at Kingsmead where England’s off-spinners, Fred Titmus and David Allen, bowled out South Africa twice.
Forty years on, England have brought Ashley Giles along to bowl left-arm finger-spin over the wicket into the rough outside the right-hander’s leg stump.
South Africa, meanwhile, named a spinner in their squad fresh from a hospital bed and still sporting the fresh scar on his neck from an operation on his thyroid gland. It seems fair to say that slow bowling will not play a prominent role over this summer’s five Test matches.
Two months ago England were firm favourites to win their first series in South Africa since MJK Smith’s tourists.
Since then South Africa have lost a series in India and England have lost a three-day match against South Africa’s second stringers in Potchefstroom. While not exactly alarmed by events in the North West, England appeared both underdone and nonplussed in Potchefstroom.
At the end of the first day, after his side had been bowled out cheaply by Charl Langeveldt, Fletcher offered this memorable explanation: ‘It swung and seamed all over the place when we batted,†he said. ‘Then the pitch flattened out when they batted.â€
Right. So that’s what happened then.
In the greater scheme of things, though, Potchefstroom should quickly be forgotten. The bounce of the Highveld is unlikely to be in evidence at St George’s Park.
In effect, England will be asked to adjust to an entirely new set of South African conditions in Port Elizabeth and, in this respect, the home team have the advantage.
The challenge for all touring teams anywhere is for their bowlers to find a length appropriate to the pitches on which they have to bowl. Jennings made the point this week that South Africa will seek to force the pace on their home turf and the choice of AB de Villiers to open the batting tends to support this claim.
It is quite clearly the intention of Jennings and Graeme Smith to give the England bowlers as little time as possible to adjust.
England’s rise as a force in Test cricket has been built upon consistency of selection and the emergence of a cluster of fast bowlers jostling for places, of whom Steve Harmison has proved the most effective.
Quick and tall, Harmison has harnessed his considerable talents to great effect, yet in South Africa Matthew Hoggard might prove to be the key member of England’s attack.
Five years ago Hoggard spent a couple of unremarkable seasons with Free State. Since then he has sharpened up a little and learned where to bowl.
His experience of conditions in this country could yet prove to be the most valuable weapon in Michael Vaughan’s armoury, and it is likely that England’s bowlers will look to the Yorkshireman for their cue.
England, it hardly needs to be said, are a more experienced and settled team than South Africa, but the results on which their challenge to Australia’s supremacy is based suggest a good, rather than a great, team.
The West Indies can be beaten at home and are dreadful tourists. New Zealand, as is their wont, went to England over-reliant on the fitness of Shane Bond.
There’s little doubt that, as things stand, Graeme Smith would seriously fancy his chances in a home Test series against the Kiwis.
And that is probably true of all comers, with the exception of the Australians.
There is new, untested, blood in this South African squad. De Villiers, Dale Steyn and Hashim Amla have all been chosen on form and potential, but if the senior members of the side — Jacques Kallis, Pollock, Makhaya Ntini — play their roles, the youngsters introduction to Test cricket will be eased.
South Africa spent some of this week attending to a variety of ailments, injuries and upsets, but it is a measure of the progress made under Jennings that the concerns, even Nicky Boje who could barely turn his head from side to side last Sunday, have been treated matter-of-factly.
Boeta Dippenaar, who has spent five years following Neil McKenzie in and out of a revolving door that is the South African middle order, said he finally feels secure of his place in the side.
He spoke for many of his team-mates this week when he said that, while cricket had sometimes seemed like a job in Sri Lanka, it had been fun again in India.
Unsurprisingly for a boy from Bloemfontein, he used a rugby analogy.
‘It’s like I said to the guys,†he told the Mail & Guardian. ‘The Springboks lost in Australia and New Zealand in the Tri-Nations, but you could see that there was something happening.
‘That’s what it was like in India. We lost, but you could feel that something was happening there, too.â€