South Africa running on empty as top talent chases riches abroad
Gap between rejuvenated England and depleted hosts looks vast, Scyld Berry in Port Elizabeth writes
Grim days for South African cricket, and no relief of Mafeking in sight. Bright days for England as their crop of young Test players is expanded by Ollie Pope and Dom Bess. The weekend of the Port Elizabeth Test has always been the time when a South African home crowd come nearest to being multiracial. The Eastern Cape was the place where Christian missionaries set up educational institutions in the 19th century, before grimmer authorities decreed there should be no such thing as a level playing field in any walk of South African life.
Even then the sport endured inland in the Eastern Cape, with fast bowler Makhaya Ntini its most famous product. And the stadium at St George’s Park was the place to protest against apartheid without being tear-gassed, by attending a Test match and cheering for South Africa’s opponents, before 1991.
The wonderful tradition of the St George’s band just about continues. A few brave souls armed with trumpets and trombones belt out the national anthem, Shosholoza and Stand By Me, but what do they now have to stand by? A South African team who are the weakest they have had not merely since transition, but – in relation to other countries – probably since 1924, when they toured England, went to Edgbaston and were dismissed for 30.
South Africa have little left on which to build after the Kolpak agents have taken their cut and depleted the country of cricketers young and old.
Nobody quibbles with Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander going out to pasture in English meadows at the end of their international careers: it is the exit of the young ones that is the killer, because no country at the best of times has more than a dozen or so Test-class cricketers on tap.
Even South Africa’s promising debutants, such as Pieter Malan and Rassie van der Dussen, are 30 and not very well versed in the ways of playing spin. Thus an off-spinner who had bowled only 1,100 first-class overs before this game ran through South Africa’s top order, dismissing Malan with a half-volley he chipped back to Dom Bess, and picking up Van der Dussen when he chose to cut an off-break far too close for the purpose.
South Africa’s No3, Zubayr Hamza, has a handsome cover drive, but he has totalled 76 runs in this series. South Africa’s No4, Faf du Plessis, played a couple of off drives against Bess before a hard-handed push edged a catch to short leg, and has totalled 77 runs. A hole where the kernel should be.
Philander is bowling an ever smaller proportion of South Africa’s overs on what has become a victory lap in his last series; while Kagiso Rabada, South Africa’s leading wicket-taker with 14 at 28 runs each in this series, is banned for the fourth and final Test at Johannesburg, starting on Friday.
Morkel, or Duanne Olivier, now of Yorkshire, or Kyle Abbott, now of Hampshire, would have been handy.
While South Africa wane, England wax. An opening partnership of some potential; top quality in Pope’s batting and short-leg fielding; Mark Wood’s duel with Jofra Archer to supply extreme pace – express pace at one end doubles or trebles the efficacy of spin at the other end – and Bess’s blossoming since he went on a Lions trip to Mumbai and learnt how to flight the ball. If only South Africa had England’s financial resources to make the most of what they have instead of being a nursery for county cricket.
To make even more of what they have, both here in South Africa and on their next Test tour of Sri Lanka, England have to improve their work around the bat for Bess. Joe Root’s dropped catch – off Bess’s bowling – was his first at slip this winter, but it was a costly one as Anrich Nortje, then on three, went on to block for more than three hours.
A decade ago or more, the England and Wales Cricket Board should have enlisted the consultancy of Sri Lanka’s Mahela Jayawardene, who is the best, the most elastic, slip-catcher off spin bowling this correspondent has seen. Every county should have been sending a slip-catcher to Loughborough for a fortnight every winter. Instead, the skill of standing at slip has had to be learnt from scratch. Nasser Hussain, Chris Jordan and Ben Stokes have been excellent – except Stokes missed the three sharp chances offered by Quinton de Kock.
And a big challenge lies ahead of Jos Buttler in the rest of this match on a turner. Last time in Sri Lanka, Ben Foakes missed one chance – and that far to his left when standing back – so Buttler has to attain the highest standard of keeping wicket to spin if he is to justify his retention of the gloves ahead of Foakes on England’s next tour.