”I certainly see him possibly getting into the England team once he has done his four years of qualifying.” Clive Rice was certainly possibly hedging his bets with some typically gun-shy South African waffle in 2000, but his prescience has proved remarkable.
The object of his curiously noncommittal admiration was a fractious 20-year-old called Kevin Pietersen, and five years later Rice may claim the satisfaction of saying he told us so.
Pietersen’s much publicised parting of ways with South African cricket — during which he flicked his peas at his nanny, screamed ”Won’t!” and stormed to his bedroom to tear the heads off his stuffed toys — was turned into a political issue, largely by Rice, who blamed the quota system for Pietersen’s omission from various representative teams.
Naturally, this was absolute drivel: if local coaches and administrators had seen in the boy any hint of the man who is now slog-sweeping Shane Warne into English bleachers, they would simply have dropped a white player to make room for him.
The truth is they didn’t see it. KwaZulu-Natal Dolphins coach Phil Russell said at the time that he was sorry to see Pietersen go, but given the lad’s appalling reputation in every dressing-room in which he has thrown his weight around, Russell’s valediction might have been less than transparent. For the rest, nobody seemed to rate him.
Interestingly, many still don’t. Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer says Warwickshire worked him out in a few overs, exposing an inability to cut the short ball bowled from around the wicket and going across him. Even among the English pundits, making a meal of their win in the second Test last week, there is a reserved objectivity, as if they are waiting for an optical illusion to be revealed.
One can understand why, simply because Pietersen asks more questions than he answers. If he’s so good, why didn’t South Africa spot him? Is his performance contingent on him being riled up, ticked off, and generally resentful of perceived persecution from teammates and administrators? If it is, what happens when he finally realises that he’s been accepted, that he doesn’t have to fight tooth and nail for recognition and security?
But perhaps the question nagging most insistently at English egos is this: if a 24-year-old debutant front-foot bullyboy can slap Brett Lee and Warne to all parts as his teammates fold around him, just how good are the Australians really? And just how bad are those teammates? Is Ian Bell really a Test batsman, or just a podgy chartered accountant who’s gone to bed after a good feed and woken up to a nightmare of pads, bats, leg-breaks and close-in fielders?
Ian Chappell reckons Ricky Ponting’s Australians are overrated. Like all this one-day cricket stuff. And the rock music the kids listen to. And women’s suffrage. Of course, Ponting will be reassured by the knowledge that, almost to a man, retired Test cricketers who played in successful teams are dismissive of any effort that doesn’t substantially surpass their own yellowing record, but it can’t be easy to be the Australian captain right now.
In June he lost a one-day international to Bangladesh; last Thursday he lost Glenn McGrath to an ankle injury; on Monday he lost Lee to a knee infection; and if Warne gets through the Test under way at Old Trafford without a spontaneous catastrophic fracture of his spinning finger, Ponting should count himself lucky.
But Chappell seems to have a point: Australia’s reliance on McGrath was never more evident than last week, as the cautious, often misfiring, English batsmen of the first Test ran amok in the first innings, scoring at five an over and padding a cushion that allowed them to collapse in the second and still win with two excruciating runs to spare.
Much has been written about McGrath’s extraordinary control, because frankly, as far as sound byte-seeking media types are concerned, there’s not much else to write about. He isn’t fast and physically dangerous, he doesn’t date supermodels or snort cocaine, and he rarely loses his temper. But since his 30th birthday (the date on which fast bowlers’ biological clocks start making ominous pings and rattles) he has taken 232 wickets at 19,3 apiece.
In the illustrious club of geriatric titans who soldiered on into their autumn years, only Sir Richard Hadlee has done better, with 276 midlife wickets at 19,46.
Nobody likes to see talented also-rans beat a hamstrung side of champions, but if removing the great seamer from the equation can guarantee a spectacle of the kind witnessed last week, then long may he remain crocked. It was a marvelous and quite new sensation to watch a Test involving Australia (with all the cleverness and bravado that that supplies) in which one didn’t know the outcome.
How wonderful to watch Warne turn a ball back 50 to bowl Andrew Strauss, and for it to mean something more than just another scalp en route to his 600th victim. How satisfying to see Lee and Michael Kasprowitz fight, their backs to the wall, not for another forgettable match or series victory but for the reputation of their team and the integrity of their own consciences. For Test cricket at its best, it seems one needs to play Australia at considerably less than its best.
When McGrath retires — presumably some time between 2008 and 2015 — and Warne follows him, Australia’s decline will be in full shrivel. The golden age of the Waughs, of massive first innings and nagging length and ripping leg-breaks, will be over. And if the Ashes so far are any indication, a new golden age for spectators will just be beginning.