Punch drunk at Oval
Philander taken to hospital amid collapse
THIS was the kind calamitous day South Africa thought they’d gotten out of their system at Trent Bridge.
There they were controlled and disciplined, but yesterday they were the opposite.
The batting was wretched, even in conditions that were ideal for bowling. Shots were played and attempted that had no business being in the South African batsmen’s game plan on a day like yesterday.
It was dark, cool and England were feeling good about themselves after Ben Stokes had energised the ground with a bruising end to his innings, smashing three sixes to get to his fifth Test hundred.
Initially openers Dean Elgar and Heino Kuhn fought hard to keep the new ball at bay and then came Toby Roland-Jones. Tall with strong shoulders, he didn’t look to be doing anything special, but ran one across Elgar which the left-hand opener feathered through to wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow.
There were questions about whether Elgar’s bat struck his pad the same time as the ball passed, but TV umpire Kumar Dharmasena stuck with his onfield colleague Joel Wilson.
At tea it was 18/1. A little over an hour later South Africa’s innings was in tatters on 61/7, the Oval a riot of noise as Proteas batsmen trotted from the field to the dressing-room.
Of those six batsmen dismissed post-tea perhaps only Hashim Amla could claim to have been gotten out – the ball from Roland-Jones angling into the right-hander, and leaving him enough off the surface to flick the glove with Bairstow doing the rest.
As for the other batsmen, there are questions about judgement and application that needed answering.
Kuhn flung the bat across the line at a full delivery, Faf Du Plessis shouldered arms to one that seamed into him, Chris Morris completed a horrible day by patting the ball back to James Anderson and Keshav Maharaj edged a back foot swish to first slip.
The discipline and patience that was a hallmark of the batting at Nottingham was gone. It was a dreadful showing from the South Africans, totally handing England the reigns.
South Africa will have to do what neither of the two sides have managed in the first couple of Tests of the series.
Once one team had thrown the first punch, the opponent has collapsed and been trampled upon.
The Proteas’ bowling in the first half of the day was far too inconsistent. The loss of Vernon Philander proving a bigger hurdle to overcome than South Africa would have hoped.
He only bowled five overs in the morning, before leaving the field. The medical staff had hoped that the ‘tummy bug’ which they thought was troubling him would have passed through his system by the morning, but he was throwing up in the dressing room in the first session.
He was taken to hospital in the afternoon, where tests and scans were performed. He did not return to the ground.
In his absence the rest of the attack, especially Morris, struggled. Lines and lengths were wayward allowing Stokes, who had bravely hung in against a seaming ball at the end of day one, to assert himself.
His innings gave England momentum, which Roland-Jones rode to smash over the South African top order. The Proteas have taken great pride in their tenacity. It’s an element neither side has shown hitherto in this series. It will have to be at the forefront of performance for the remainder of this Test match.