Last month, Nicky Boje took 8/102 for Free State against Western Province. As a cricketing feat, it was remarkable for two reasons. The first was that it should have been achieved by a bowler who has so consistently failed to make himself relevant in international cricket.
Given the impression, compiled over too many Test seasons, of Boje wheeling away through over after impotent over, or leaking runs on both sides of the wicket to comfortable, unruffled batsmen, his figures seemed to be less a vindication for the left-arm tweaker than a clear illustration of how far below Test class Cape Town’s batsmen are.
With the first Test against Australia unfolding in Perth, it seems obscure — perhaps even contrary — to recall an anomaly of spin in a domestic competition halfway around the world.
At the Waca, full-stops and capitals removed by decades of hard-bitten gladiatorial action, spinning is what helmets do on the pitch once they’ve been knocked off batsmen’s heads. This is the spiritual home of the ”ear, nose and throat specialist”, the bully with the big hair, gold necklace and flared trousers. Do not, the suddenly butched-up spirit of the game grunts, talk about spin. Not for these five days.
But the second reason for noting Boje’s figures speaks directly to the exhilarating tussle getting under way in Australia; for his 8/102 was the pest performance by a South African spinner in 27 years. What that says about the state of spin in South Africa needs no elucidation here, except to say that pie-chucking is a two-man job: in short, bad spin produces the bad player of spin, which in turn encourages the bad spinner.
It seems fitting, as South Africa walk towards the Valley of the Shadow of Warne, sometimes called Sydney, that it was a leg-spinner against whose figures Boje was measured last month.
Twenty-seven years ago, Denys Hobson used the Cape Town gale and his prodigious talents to lay waste to Eastern Province, taking 9/64, serious figures by a serious bowler against serious batsmen. A generation later, no one has risen to claim his title as the greatest South African spinner of the post-Tayfield era; and, accordingly, very few South African batsmen have stepped up as world-class players of spin.
It’s a flaw in the national game that worries Hobson, even if it brought him bucketfuls of wickets in his playing days. With hundreds of Tests between them, many of them against Australia and Warne, the South African tourists could be expected to have got something of a handle on playing good spin, or at least be better equipped not to fold at the slightest deviation of a cricket ball off the straight. When asked if this was a reasonable expectation, his reply is short and to the point.
”No. That young wrist-spinner [Beau Casson] took eight wickets against them at the Waca. And he’s a newcomer.”
The implication is clear, and the unnamed force at the other end of the scale to the raw newcomer — the honed, glittering veteran — quickly transforms Hobson from pundit to aficionado, pointing out that Warne has made up for a loss of variety with supreme control and a decade of experience.
”I mean, he’s taken 80 Test wickets this year — and the year’s not even over yet — and that wasn’t against Mickey Mouse teams on spinner’s wickets.” Indeed, no. The spinner’s wicket is still coming, and whether or not our tourists emerge as Mickey Mouse or simply Goofy seems to be entirely in Warne’s hands if the South Africans play him as they have traditionally dealt with ferociously focused spin.
It’s the worst thing they could do, says Hobson. ”If you start blocking him, there’s only going to be one winner. The South Africans should attack, and attack straight, but I have yet to see them doing that.
”We’ve never played him in the ‘V’, and if ever there was a time to do that, it’s now at the Waca, where he’s not going to turn the ball a huge amount. He’s going to bounce it and bowl straight, which is an ideal opportunity to play straight. He doesn’t like it when batsmen score 3 an over off him; he’s not used to that.”
Warne was always going to play at Perth, despite his relatively weak showing there in the past. It is a non-negotiable selection that the South Africans might consider a boon. Stuart MacGill, the most dangerous understudy in world cricket, has had a much better time of it at the Waca, an unpredictable result for an unpredictable bowler.
MacGill’s leg-breaks are erratic by the standard set by Warne. They loop too high, drop too short, sit up and plead to be spanked. They start luring a batsman away from his off-stump, only to present him with a leg-stump half-volley. They come through quickly, allowing easy strokes, or they dawdle, allowing big ones. But what they all do is deviate an appalling amount.
If Warne has ever spun the ball as viciously, it hasn’t been in the past 10 years. And the trouble with the massively spun leg-break, landing all over the place, is that it tempts one into having a go; having a go at Australia spinners usually has only one result.
MacGill will surely play at Sydney, but for now at least the tourists will be spared the bowler Hobson calls ”a perfect foil” for Warne. In the meantime, his advice is bold.
”Our pace attack is better than theirs. Lee always goes for a few, and if they can get into him, they can expose the Australian attack. But if they allow Warne to slow down their rate, they’re in trouble. If we can keep Glenn McGrath out, we could be looking at a decent score.”
Getting into Lee may seem masochistic given the reputation of the Waca, but it has slowed in recent seasons. Then again, so has McGrath, and he managed to hobble to 8/24 against Pakistan at the ground last year …