In the usual course of a day, there is very little about Graeme Smith to remind one of Uma Thurman or Michelle Pfeiffer. Smith is somewhat taller than both women, and is no doubt much more comfortable against short-pitched fast bowling. And yet this week the three seem indistinguishable.
But first a reverse. Last week, this page congratulated South Africa on a well deserved draw at Sydney, and a bracing 1-0 series loss that seemed less a defeat than a heartening escape. That article was written at stumps on the fourth day of the final Test, back when the Earth still revolved around the sun and bears crapped in the woods. It was written from a position of common sense, and assumed that the actions of the South African skipper and coach would be launched from a similar position. But, as another unhinged captain said, to his mutinying crew aboard the USS Caine, you can’t assume a goddamn thing.
Plenty has been written about Smith’s second declaration, and so one need not reiterate the details of the most stupid cricketing acts in recent times. But, all those critics who rightly bewailed a staggering abdication of sanity focused on a sporting loss, a strategic defeat. Few mentioned the most obvious and painful effect of that pointless surrender: cringing, skin-crawling embarrassment.
And so back to Uma and Michelle. In Dangerous Liaisons, the fiendish Vicomte de Valmont has his way with both as only an 18th Century cad knows how.
Ricky Ponting is no John Malkovich, and heaven knows Shane Warne is no Glenn Close, but nonetheless this week Smith emerged looking like a naive debutante, flattered and patronised by a devilish French noble, lured into believing that she was loved, only to wake up roughly deflowered and pathetically alone. Shaun Pollock’s brain-fart over run-rates in the 2003 World Cup was embarrassing for its dimness. Smith’s declaration was infinitely more excruciating, because it seems to have been motivated by sloppy romanticism.
Mickey Arthur said the team wanted to ”express” itself through its cricket. Oh, for God’s sake, pull yourself together, man! We are South Africans. Our cricket is intrinsically defensive. At its best, it is grandly dour. At its worst, it is paranoid and prone to spontaneous combustion. Certainly, these are traits that should be challenged, and surely they will be, as more black cricketers bring their emotional backgrounds to bear on the white game. But to suddenly decide to play Australian cricket without a strike bowler, with the home team famous for only two things — batting fast and winning Tests — was simply moronic.
Where a thumping draw would have opened up the return series in South Africa rather nicely, suddenly we are the dunces again, the choking Japies who bumble about with our thick necks and fragile tempers. We have allowed ourselves to be suckered: by the Australian media, who managed to make our batsmen feel embarrassed or uneasy about their scoring rate, and by Ponting, who persuaded our bowlers they would be unplayable on a nightmare final day pitch.
Some have defended Smith with a dissentient platitude, arguing that he found himself ”on the wrong side of the result”. Had South Africa won, they insisted, we might now be hailing Smith as a world-beating strategist and leader of men. Yes sir, had they made 80 more runs before declaring, and had no rain delays, and fielded two genuinely quick bowlers instead of three hard-working medium-pacers, and possessed a wrist-spinner with an average of 22 who could turn it both ways, and had Ponting been struggling for runs instead of channelling them directly from the pagan god of brutal batting, we would have whupped those Aussies for sure. Nitwits.
The greatest victim of the declaration and the subsequent justifications has been Jacques Kallis. Having batted with his back to the wall in a series in which South Africa scored 20% fewer runs than Australia, he now finds himself pilloried by the mob for ”being selfish” and ”batting too slowly”. What extraordinarily short memories we have.
Certainly Kallis’s batting can be frustrating to watch, especially for those who have seen him attack at will against decent bowling. Perhaps it cost us victory at Sydney. Perhaps it warded off an even heavier defeat. One can’t say. But what one can say, categorically and with a decade of empirical evidence to back one up, is that without Kallis’ selfish, slow batting, South African cricket would be decidedly runty.
The numbers are simple. In order to survive in Test cricket, a team needs to make at least 300 every time it bats. Anything less leaves it exposed and endangered. To scrape shaky par, the openers need to reach 60 and the second wicket can go down only with the score on 90. And yet, for the first six years of Kallis’s career, South Africa averaged 30/1 and 68/2. In other words, his walk out to the middle would signal a crisis, heightened by the very real prospect of a score of 30/2 or 70/3 if he didn’t bat slowly and selfishly.
Of course, the odd drive over extra cover wouldn’t go amiss when the team is on 500/3; but if Kallis is guilty of anything, it is of inflexible consistency. And if the choice is between a guaranteed 50 runs, made off 90 or 150 deliveries, and a flashy 45 every second innings, I know which one I’d take. One day we’ll play like Australians, and there won’t be room for Kallis’s batting; but until then, there’s not much of a future without it.