/ 21 January 2005

Proteas down for the count

Having fought each other to a standstill at the Wanderers, England and South Africa are at it again. Like two prizefighters, too battered to land the final blow but too proud to let their knees buckle, the rivals have reeled into Centurion, leaning forehead to forehead, their eyes swollen shut.

England are ahead on points, but are bleeding heavily. South Africa are still dancing and weaving, but that’s all they’ve been doing. And it didn’t help that the local trainer KO’d his champ in practice: the bravery of Graeme Smith’s woozy defiance in Johannesburg, and the drama of that marvelous final session, overshadowed the rank amateurishness of braining key players during training.

To see Shaun Pollock deflect a ball off the back of his head to deep midwicket; to watch English bowlers cruise in with five slips and two gullies; to absorb the stunning reality that South Africa had been dismissed in two sessions on the final day of a Test, when a draw seemed not only likely but entirely fitting; to come to any of this cold would be to assume that the home team had been ambushed on a crumbling viper of a pitch by English quicks slinging serious heat and aiming for the throat, cap-badge and box.

In fact it still seems incongruous that all that chaos was wrought by a single fast-medium bowler, tending to chubbiness and eschewing histrionics, who bowled quite conventional and quite beautiful away-swing. Surely one is misremem- bering? Surely it was Steve Harmison, finding form at last, or Andrew Flintoff making the ball spit Ambrosian off a length?

Perhaps Matthew Hoggard’s modesty and apparently genuine surprise at his success stems from the fact that he didn’t bust a gut trying to hurt people, that he didn’t perform magic with the seam or get deliveries to hit cracks. All he did was aim at off-stump and allow the ball to swing. Every so often he’d whip his arm through slightly flatter, spearing in a straight one. And South Africa’s batsmen clawed at their eyes and swooned.

Charl Langeveldt wouldn’t have known what all the fuss was about. He’d done exactly the same to England at Newlands, and as someone who’s life’s work to date is the pursuit of making the ball swing, he must have been surprised that his trade should be approached with such terror by his teammates.

Hoggard’s not done yet. With Flintoff landing on a sore heel, and Harmison still nursing the calf that caused a memorable on-field ruckus in Johannesburg, England’s attack is astonishingly thin. In fact it’s as thin as the attack that, well, dismissed South Africa in four hours.

Ashley Giles is now crucial to the tourists’ batting strategy (which seems to involve either opener surviving long enough to be reinvigorated by Giles’s feisty strokeplay) but as a bowler, the King of Spain is irrelevant at Centurion.

Spinners have faired abysmally at the venue, and if Giles manages a pair of wickets in the match, he will have outperformed most, including Shane Warne who managed none for 86 in 1996/97.

Indeed, Centurion’s history turns his opposite number, Nicky Boje, into an outright liability. The left-armer was as awful in Johannesburg as he was focused in Cape Town, but with a draw here ensuring an England series win, Boje cannot be allowed to continue his profligate and frankly pointless brand of bowling. With two wickets a Test at almost 62 runs apiece in the series to date, and a rotten economy rate, Boje has done less than Paul Adams did to have his international career curtailed.

But a draw is unlikely. It always rains at Centurion, yet only one of the eight Tests played there has been drawn (Hansie Cronje and Indian bookmakers helped induce a result in another). Battered, exhausted England have one last swing, and one can’t help feeling they’ll connect.