Future’s bright
‘Pope and Bess made a massive contribution to our win,’ says Root Third Test special,
England defeated South Africa on the fifth morning here yesterday, but only after a rollicking lastwicket partnership of 99, between Keshav Maharaj and the debutant No 11 Dane Paterson, which was not terminated by any bowler, but by a run-out.
It served as one reminder that England are still mid-table, and no threat to India and Australia as the leading candidates to reach the World Test Championship final. A second is that South Africa lost their previous home series, to Sri Lanka for the first time ever at home – and Sri Lanka are currently being held by Zimbabwe.
A spinner who can turn the ball away from right-handers, whether defending or slogging merrily as South Africa’s 10th-wicket pair did, is one essential which this England team lack. Joe Root beavered away for 11 overs in a desperate attempt to take his first five-wicket haul, but he could only concede 56 runs before Sam Curran’s run-out preserved some gloss on this victory which put England 2-1 up.
Another essential is a wicketkeeper who can keep on turning pitches, which will be the starting point for the two-test series in Sri Lanka in March, and in the five-test series in India next winter. Jos Buttler’s game fell apart under fire: the over in which Root conceded 24 runs was rounded off by four byes, which made 12 for the innings.
As always, it is in spinning conditions that the difference between the keeper born and made is manifested. Above all, Buttler’s heart no longer seemed to be in the job by the end, for even when he caught a nick by Paterson off Curran – not spotted by the umpire – he did not throw the ball up in triumph.
Ollie Pope was player of the match, not only for his maiden Test century – an excellent trait that all bar 25 of his 363 Test runs have come in England’s first innings – but for his short-leg catching, too. It is no coincidence Pope is the pick of England’s young crop in fielding as well as his speciality, because excellence in fielding normally accompanies excellence in batting, owing to the hand-eye skills.
Overall, other perhaps than Buttler, every England player contributed here, as in Cape Town. Most surprising of them, considering he had gone six months without any games, was Mark Wood, who injected electric pace, enthusiasm to the point of zeal, and big hitting. His impact was all the more creditable given that reverse swing, for which he was originally selected, was unavailable in the prevailing dampness.
If Wood can string together two
Tests – he has described his left leg as being wrapped “like a mummy” to let him hurl deliveries like a catapult – and Jofra Archer’s right elbow is working again, the fourth Test starting in Johannesburg on Friday is not going to be lengthy.
The summer afternoon storms of the Highveld will be needed to take the game into a fifth day, because the Wanderers is reported to still have the fastest Test pitch in South Africa and the hosts, for all the morale boost of that final fling, are shattered.
Only a great innings can save South Africa from a third consecutive defeat. Dean Elgar is the one home batsman who appears equipped for such defiance, though the captain, Faf du Plessis, was capable in his fresher days.
In a way, though, the player of this match was no player at all but England’s spin-bowling consultant, Jeetan Patel, the former New Zealand Test player who is still Warwickshire’s captain and the best off-spinner in the County Championship.
Soon he should be appointed the first full-time spin-bowling coach England have had, after he oversaw the fall of 10 wickets to off-spin for 174 runs.
Under Patel’s aegis, Dom Bess took six wickets and Root four. They mounted a spin attack which – until the last-wicket slog when subtlety flew out the window – was not a world away from what Fred Titmus and David Allen, or Ray Illingworth and Pat Pocock, would
have offered in the days when finger-spin had a significant presence in the county game.
Patel stresses the importance of bowling your best ball every time, not experimenting, but putting the onus on the batsman to try to break the shackles, with an “in-out field” – thus a deep midwicket for the slog-sweep, yet three or four men around the bat. The next thing is a consistent slip catcher, and nobody better to train up Ben Stokes in Sri Lanka than their former captain, Mahela Jayawardene.
Bess and Root were helped by the inability of South Africa’s specialist batsmen either to use their feet to come down the pitch – Du Plessis was the only one to do so – or sweep, let alone reverse sweep. In this context it was an admirable performance, on the back of Wood’s
extreme pace, which always enhances a spinner’s efficacy.
So instant was Wood’s impact that he dismissed Elgar with his second ball on day four and Kagiso Rabada with his first of day five. After Vernon Philander had been dismissed by another diving catch by Pope off bat and pad, this time off Stuart Broad, Wood had Rabada spooning a catch to mid-on as his last act before being banned.
At least the 10th-wicket stand was a vestige of South Africa’s customary defiance. Patel was needed at this point, to tell his young charges that angling into righthanded sloggers is not the way to go, as Root did, and Bess did, and Curran when bowling round the wicket, but taking it away from their hitting arc. But they will learn, probably quickly.