Proteas bowlers blitz England’s batsmen
Day 3 of 5:
England 165 and 149
South Africa 326
SA won by an innings and 12 runs
DEAN Elgar acknowledged that when he arrived at Lord’s yesterday, he was thinking about his lower order building on the team’s lead and then the prospect of some long hours in the field. It didn’t turn out that way at all.
Play on the third day lasted just under five hours, the match itself, a little more than two days – taking into account all the time lost to rain on the first day – and the accelerated nature of the outcome was stunning.
South Africa knew they had a very good attack; all that chatter beforehand about looking forward to seeing England try their attacking approach against “our bowlers” wasn’t macho talk.
The Proteas have a very serious group of fast bowlers; Kagiso Rabada claimed a first innings five-for, and yesterday the quickest of the lot, Anrich Nortje, produced an explosive spell that blew the English away in 40 minutes. The Sky Sports commentators wants to give them a nickname – “Fab Four”, “Awesome Foursome”. Call them what you like, you don’t want to be facing them.
Oh, and the left-arm spinner isn’t bad either.
While Lungi Ngidi and Rabada bowled two high-quality new-ball spells in which one chance was created and missed by Keegan Petersen at third slip, it wasn’t they who would make the breakthrough.
Keshav Maharaj started bowling in the eighth over, a seemingly bizarre decision given the fast-bowling
resources at Elgar’s disposal.
The horribly out of sorts Zak Crawley foolishly swept hard and was trapped lbw by Maharaj’s third ball, and then, with his 18th delivery, the left-arm spinner found the same mode of dismissal to get rid of Ollie Pope, who played around one that replays showed would have crashed into his
leg stump.
Two down at lunch and none to the quickies, England for all their outward coolness must have been shocked.
The big fish, Joe Root, was reeled in by Ngidi, who bowled magnificently yesterday. He had the ball on a string, moving it one way then another, beating both edges and doing so at pace. He drew Root into a jab outside offstump with a lovely delivery that just held its line, with Aiden Markram taking a good low catch at second slip.
It would have been understandable had Elgar kept Ngidi going, but he chucked the ball to Nortje and then the fun really started.
Jonny Bairstow had been tempted by a few balls outside his off-stump – getting one away through the covers for four, but mostly wafting as they went past his outside edge at 145km/h-plus. Eventually he touched one, Kyle Verreynne took the catch, Nortje popped some blood vessels as he celebrated. His best delivery came in his next over as from around the wicket he got one to straighten off the surface to the left-handed Alex Lees, who if he hadn’t edged it would have been bowled.
Ben Foakes didn’t want to know and faced just two balls before edging behind to Verreynne, and in the space of nine deliveries, South Africa’s chances of winning went from very good to inevitable.
Rabada returned to pick up Ben Stokes and Stuart Broad, while Marco Jansen, who’d earlier just missed out on a maiden Test half-century, took the last two wickets to set off some understandably animated celebrations.
All the talk beforehand was about England’s approach and afterwards their captain Stokes said they wouldn’t read too much into the result of the match. Head coach Brendon Mccullum, praised for liberating the England change-room, said people should “buckle up for the ride”.
Well the ride went one way only in the first Test, and yesterday it was pretty darn fast and England couldn’t keep up.