Numbers prove Morne’s prowess
The second fiddle who soldiered on in the background
● There’s something about a tall fast bowler that completes a bowling attack. Every great cricket team has one that’s been world class yet hardly gets acclaim.
Morne Morkel’s in good company here. West Indian Joel Garner routinely had to play second fiddle to the likes of the late Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding and Andy Roberts. That’s how it is for some and there are times they prefer it like that. This writer never expected the younger Morkel to be anything but a serviceable paceman the Proteas could call on.
His older brother Albie was a feared whacker of the ball and a decent limitedovers bowler.
It would’ve been tough to imagine Morne would be South Africa’s fifth 300-wicket club entry. That’s exactly what has transpired.
The 300-wicket club may not be the vaunted company it used to be when Fred Trueman entered that hallowed territory but it is an important landmark for Morkel.
In an age in which Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Kagiso Rabada were frequently in the limelight, he soldiered on in the background.
Just to remember how good Morkel has been, only five Australians (Shane Warne (708), Glenn McGrath (563), Dennis Lillee (355), Mitchell Johnson (313) and Brett Lee (310)) have taken more test wickets than him.
If you let those statistics sink in, you’ll realise Morkel’s taken more wickets than Craig McDermott (295) and Jason Gillespie (259).
They were better skilled pacemen whose careers were bedevilled by ill-timed injuries, but that’s their cruel luck.
Fortune didn’t always favour Morkel, especially when it came to injuries. But when you collect 300 with the bowlers Morkel had for company, you can’t be denied the excellence tag.
If there’s a slight regret, and one view Holding expressed, Morkel could have bowled a fuller length.
One can only begin to imagine how lethal Morkel would have been if he had concentrated on getting the ball up.
But the game is here and with his deliveries that spat viciously from a length, Morkel carved his gentle-giant niche among the shorter, higher octane speedsters around him.
Could we have asked for more venom? Well, his fleeting, yet unforgettable battle with Michael Clarke at Newlands four years ago was everything we could have wanted from him. Yet, in the bigger scheme of things, it went unrewarded.
Morkel was fast, brutal, menacing and accurate in a way he wasn’t before. That storied spell had nothing but heartbreak to show for it. Clarke compiled a brilliant 161*, broken shoulder and all.
Such was the latent meanness of the game, Ryan Harris castled Morkel in the last 30 minutes of the fifth day to seal a thrilling win for Australia. The game of cricket had more pain in store for him in the form of the World Cup semifinal.
His red-eyes and tears said everything about an opportunity missed and how that chance of a hard-earned play-off game may never come again.
It was a painful, telling and significant moment neatly suspended in time as the Proteas for once didn’t choke on the big stage yet found themselves on the losing side. In time, such wounds are carried with pride when one gives his all, like Morkel has in his 12 years.
With his career wrapping up whenever the fourth test at the Wanderers ends, World Cup glory will never come but that’s a wellworn South African cricketing proverb. Some victories are meant for other soldiers but some tread where others dared not.
The void of a world title that was there for the taking can never be filled but not everyone can boast of being in three South African test teams that successfully conquered Australia. No team can survive without a Morkeltype bowler; one who bends his back and extracts life from dead surfaces.
Not everyone is born to be a superstar and no team packed with superstars functions optimally.
In another cricketing life, Morkel will score a test 100 and become a better outfielder — but in what was asked of him, he performed with distinction. The game will always remember that.