On Tuesday evening, when Jacques Rudolph stepped out to a flighted leg-break and eased it to the cover fence, justice was done. Those four runs took him to a Test century that will mean a great deal to him for the rest of his life; and they underlined with an emphatic stroke the confidence and resolve with which the Proteas denied Australia victory in the first Test.
But they also went some little way towards erasing the ugly memories of Rudolph’s last Australian tour, when the Inquisitors of Transformation put his career on the rack and stretched it to breaking point. Until Tuesday, he had seemed a broken man, doomed to a fitful, Dippenaar-esque life of one-off appearances, always playing for his place, always chastised for being too constipated as he ground out desperate 40s.
Today those memories remain — how can they not? — but they are joined by other, happier ones: a green Jacques Kallis, on borrowed time in the national team, saving a Boxing Day match in Melbourne with a patient, spendthrift 100-and-change; Gary Kirsten, similarly precarious, massacring English morale with 275 at Durban; and perhaps the greatest defensive effort ever witnessed by South Africans, Mike Atherton, with the press of two countries questioning his character and ancestry, batting for an eternity against the best fast bowler in the world at the Wanderers.
In short, Rudolph’s pedigree now features words such as ”nuggety”, ”guts” and ”triumph”, and the old lexicon — ”controversy”, ”quotas”, ”victim” — has been scrapped.
Which is not to say that the corporate and political interests that have castrated and lobotomised the game aren’t going to make a damned good go of meddling, if only to claim some of the credit for a player whom they did their utmost to destroy four years ago. A press release from Gerald Majola, boss of the United Cricket Board, seemed innocuous enough in its praise for Rudolph and the team; but it also spoke volumes about the priorities of administrators.
”The century by Jacques Rudolph is rightly being compared by commentators as one of the fighting innings yet played in Test cricket,” read the statement, Rudolph’s ”fighting innings” left dangling without qualifying adjective or phrase. ”This was certainly a morale [sic] victory against the world champions,” it continued, ”and you can carry many positives into the remaining matches.”
Rudolph batted for seven hours for the honour of his name, that of his team-mates, and that of his countrymen like Majola. That Majola’s office couldn’t take 30 seconds to proofread its statement is absolutely shameful. Shameful, but not surprising.
Had anyone who understands cricket written or read that statement, they might also have pointed out that the draw at Perth was neither a ”morale” victory nor a moral one. This was not a heroic draw by a team outclassed all the way. At the end of the first day, the Proteas were more than contenders. And then the wheels fell off. They squandered the chance of a big first innings lead, they bowled dismally with the new ball, and they dropped catches.
To talk of moral victories is to overlook the very real fact that, given some luck and considerably more application, South Africa could have won this Test. Instead they cocked it up, and to praise them as a group for saving the day — instead of signalling out Rudolph as a magnificent lone hero, standing head and shoulders above his teammates — is to celebrate mediocrity.
Indeed, Rudolph’s resolve may have deflected criticism from those badly in need of it. If Herschelle Gibbs were an Australian, he’d be dropped for Melbourne, an overdue reminder that talent means nothing if it indulges hedonism when responsibility is required. Likewise, as controlled and dangerous as Makhaya Ntini had been on the first day, so wretched was he during the match-altering period in the evening of the second day.
Well rested, brandishing a new ball, buoyed by a lead over a team that rarely surrenders such things, and with 60 deliveries left before stumps — an infamously tricky period for batsmen — Ntini had everything stacked in his favour. And yet of the 30 balls he bowled, just 10 forced the batsmen to play. The rest were either left, or swatted away with the disdain they deserved.
Ntini is paid very well to hurl a ball at a particular spot. That’s all he has to do. Get up, have breakfast, practice hurling a ball at a spot, go to bed. Ten balls out of 30, when the series is up for grabs, is bad.
Of course nobody tried quite as hard to avoid victory as Australian captain Ricky Ponting. Pundits said his declaration was 90 minutes late, but in truth it was about five years too late. Clearly Ponting grew up watching Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh declare late on the fourth day, but the firepower they had at their disposal is long gone. On a curiously lifeless fifth-day pitch that pulled Brett Lee’s teeth and offered Shane Warne nothing but painfully slow turn and medium bounce, four sessions was never going to be enough.
And so to Melbourne, with many more questions than answers for both sides. Pace, or meaningful spin back-up? Justin Kemp or Nicky Boje? Kemp played Warne beautifully, but his bowling was horrible, so who drops out to accommodate the returning Kallis? Ashwell Prince, looking out of his depth? Why was Andrew Symonds selected at all? Is Glenn McGrath crocked or just warming up slowly? And the great quandary, given that Australia has traditionally cranked out Biblical scores in the second innings of the Melbourne Test: does Graeme Smith risk surrendering a 150-run first-innings lead to avoid Warne on day five?
Questions linger, but not all are pleasant, especially not those about racist abuse hurled at Perth by what one suspects were South African expatriates. To those Afro-Australian hicks who fled from one brackish backwater to another, taking with them their inbred prejudices and miniscule opinions; who have been passed over by history and abandoned to the suffocating cliché of braais and regrets that comprise their pointless lives — ag shame. Win, lose or draw, South Africans are happier because you’re no longer one of us.