In a sport in which even, chivalrous, contests are considered the ideal, it might seem incendiary to suggest that the series now winding up at Newlands has been a splendid one.
South Africa’s wretched plunge to 84 all out at the Wanderers was hardly the stuff of narrow squeaks, while Sree Sreesanth’s time-wasting in the Durban dusk thrust back into spotlight the schoolboy traits that always lurk below the surface of serene professional sports. And yet it has been splendid, for it is always a spectacle to see a corpse rise up and give its dissector a bloody nose.
Arriving in South Africa with the tag of the worst tourists in the world, and dragging an albatross of a form book behind them, India lived up to all expectations in the one-day series and went towards the Tests like a cartload of condemned wretches wheeled through bloodthirsty throngs. The Wanderers, the national mood breathed huskily, would produce injuries.
Indians would get hurt. Ugga-ugga, muttered local fans in their sleep, dreaming of Dale Steyn making people bleed.
And then the wheels fell off the cart and Les Misérables scampered away to the delight of at least one correspondent. Batting collapses such as that at the Wanderers are one of the game’s great joys, because they present a magnificent spectacle that signifies precisely nothing. Rarely does Schadenfreude come without strings attached: excessive glee over the misfortune of one’s own team invariably invites accusations that one is a cynic or an Australian fifth columnist (as if all-conquering hordes like the Australians need treacherous subtleties to achieve their diabolical ends!).
But collapses happen and they happen to everyone. That same horde of antipodean yak-milkers have twice been rumbled in recent years, rolled over for 120 at Kandy in 2004, before crumpling to 93 all out at Mumbai last year. The curtain in the Sydney Cricket Ground long room did not tear; the five wallabies of the apocalypse did not hop forth. In 2006, Australian cricket was still ludicrously powerful. But more of this in a moment.
In short, 84 all out meant almost nothing to South Africa’s long-term campaigns. But for these 15 days — the last two of which are currently under way — it meant salvation; a series-galvanising catastrophe that injected new, wonderful, doubt into a foregone conclusion.
That tone set, doubt and vacillation ran riot at Durban. During Graeme Smith’s tremendously brave second innings, you could smell the rubber burning between his ears as he fried synapses judging lines and lengths.
The umpires, too, were dazzled by mayhap, quickly abandoning reasonable doubt for an entirely more unreasonable brand. Indeed, it was crucial to the Proteas’ eventual success that Rahul Dravid was twice amputated at the crease by obscure decisions, first adjudged leg before to a ball bouncing over a second leg-stump, then given caught behind after on-driving his pad.
Dravid’s terse departure in the second instance will stand for the ages as a model of self-discipline. Lesser mortals would have stuck a stump through the match referee’s door. Dravid simply strolled off.
It also made all the difference in the world that Mark Boucher survived to make 53, having been nailed stone dead by an Anil Kumble leg-break before he’d reached 20.
No doubt the Swings-and-Roundabouts Brigade will point to the poor decision handed to Hashim Amla in the second innings at Durban, an almost identical delivery to the one that so rudely upended Dravid in the first, and will try to argue that poor decisions always average out. This is, of course, quite true for the long term, but over five days three shockers versus one can have a profoundly unbalancing effect, especially when two of them concern one of the world’s best batsmen.
But more importantly, camouflaging Amla’s second failure of the match (and fourth of the series) as an umpiring blunder only obscures the real picture, which is an increasingly worrying one: statistically, Amla fails to reach double figures almost every second time he bats. Of course, strictly speaking, he is still in possession of the Kallis Immunity Idol, the totemic reminder of Kallis’s rotten start in Tests that gives all class batsmen a licence to be abject for their first couple of seasons. But while the Genie of the Rotten Green Kallis is a powerful one to summon, the Dolphins stalwart is in danger of rubbing the lamp a little thin.
It is a logical leap from rubbing lamps to scraping barrels, and one felt that the SABC was scraping the bottom of theirs with its pitiful congratulation of Shaun Pollock for taking his 400 Test wicket. The empty stadium and the three apparatchiks on the cardboard podium came with the territory; but it would have been nice if someone other than the sponsorship manager of South African Breweries could have been introduced first. Someone, say, like Pollock. When the bowler rushed away to the dressing-room after a few hurried thanks, one might have liked some footage of career highlights, with expert commentary.
Instead one got Imran Munshi — you know, Imran Munshi — talking, at some length, about his happy time in the American pharmaceuticals industry. And then Kass Naidoo asked him what the cricket culture was like in the United States. Pollock, anyone? Four hundred wickets, anyone?
Holy mother of God …
It goes without saying that the Australians would have got that one right.
Some grizzled veteran would have been on hand to shake the bowler’s paw, and to reminisce about Pommy bahstads, after which the professionally edited nostalgia would have filled the tea break. Instead we got Big Pharma on an Etch-a-Sketch.
The mentality that thought this Borat-esque show to be a good idea is the same one that continues to wonder why the Australians dominate world cricket. It wonders and worries and postulates, but ultimately fails to recognise that Australians will continue to be better than South Africans — at everything — for as long as they remain more intelligent, and more in touch with their shared kinship, than we are.
It’s not as if we’re short of examples, mind you; and last week’s farewell tour by Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, and, belatedly, Justin Langer, once again presented South Africans with plenty to emulate in terms of saying goodbye to national treasures.
The vox pops inserts on radio and television revealed plenty of Australians who detested Warne’s antics or didn’t care much for all the hoopla or didn’t really know either way, but it didn’t stop the punters from packing into that country’s imperious coliseums and standing to bid their champion and his mates farewell. And the showmen obliged, lifting their talismanic spinner onto their shoulders for him to wave and salute and twinkle. There was no shy doffed cap here or a slouching lope off the field, hell-bent on preventing tears, or any of the other dismal South African valedictory rituals. This was a send-off.
Australia can only be weaker without Warne and McGrath. Both are the greatest exponents of their respective arts that the world has ever seen.
Stuart Clarke is a wonderful bowler, and Stuart MacGill demonic on his day, but it is inevitable that more draws will begin to flatten Australian champagne, and more losses turn it sour. But for this week, it’s all about the fat boy and the thin man, and all the hell they raised together.
Half a world away, India could be forgiven for taking a Warne-like bow. At the time of writing the Newlands decider was still a sun-baked run fest, with a draw looking most likely, but win or lose, the tourists have raised plenty more hell than anyone ever imagined.