How will five fit into four? No one knows

SA and Zimbabwe venture into unknown territory

Cape Town

● Let no one tell you that the game starting at St George’s Park on Tuesday is the inaugural four-day test. It is, in fact, the 86th.

New Zealand and Pakistan played the last matches of this odd ilk in February 1973. Or almost 45 years ago.

Those three games involved neither a pink ball nor floodlights, nor was play set to start at 1.30pm — all of which will be the case when South Africa and Zimbabwe line up in Port Elizabeth this week.

Blame, or give credit to, Haroon Lorgat. His stint as Cricket South Africa’s suit-inchief came to a sticky end over the expensive pipe dream that was the first edition of the T20 Global League, but at least this idea of his will see the light of day. And night.

Fiddling with the number of days is more common than may be thought. Fifty-eight tests have been granted three days and no more, and 65 have been afforded six — most recently in Sydney in October 2005 when Australia, with typical overstatement, needed less than four days to beat a World XI captained by Graeme Smith and including Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher.

One hundred tests were timeless, the most famous of them at Kingsmead in March 1939 when South Africa and England ground to a halt and a draw after 10 days — or 46 hours of cricket — and the visitors had to make a mad dash for the docks, which involved taking the train from Durban to Cape Town, to catch their ship home.

What’s with all the history? To lend context to a contest that is unlikely to rise to any great heights on its own merits.

Zimbabwe have played 21 tests since August 2011, when their voluntary exclusion from the test arena ended. In the same period South Africa have played almost three times as many: 59. The Zimbabweans have won three of those games. The South Africans? Thirty.

Nonetheless, Dale Steyn tried to compare these incomparable teams: “They’ve got test status and there’s some good players there, guys who’ve been around for a while.”

But he seemed more enamoured of the unusual circumstances of the match: “How will we go about playing four-day, day/night cricket? When do you declare? What do you do? It’s going to be interesting all round.

“It leaves gaps for even the best teams in the world to slip up. So you can’t take any team lightly. You’ve got to have a shrewd captain who’s got good game plans and everybody’s got to buy into it.”

Steyn won’t lack personal motivation for the match, not with him needing only five more wickets to surpass Shaun Pollock’s total of 491 to become South Africa’s all-time leading test bowler.

Record back in sight

When he broke down with a fractured shoulder and ripped muscles at the Waca in Perth in November 2016 — the last test he played — the record looked like it might remain out of his reach.

But more than a year of recovery and rehabilitation has put the milestone in his sights again. Or in the sights of his fans, at least.

“Every time someone talks about a record I get injured,” Steyn said. “So I’m not bloody bothered. Let’s just go play. Let’s see what happens.”

Graeme Cremer, Zimbabwe’s had an idea what would happen.

“I haven’t really played much in PE but I assume if there’s any sort of dew at night and it gets on the seam, then it won’t spin.

“Maybe in the afternoon it might. It might favour seamers with the swing and the seam.”

Steyn will like the sound of that, but he should know that Cremer hasn’t played a game of any description at St George’s Park — six-day, five-day, four-day, three-day, twoday, one-day, half-day, whatever. captain,