Proteas’ nightmare numbers

Scary thought: If Faf du Plessis scores less than 57 runs at the Wanderers, it could be the first time since readmission that the Proteas won’t have an active Test player with a batting average of over 40.

Even scarier thought: The English side that dismantled the hosts so effortlessly by an innings in the third Test in Port Elizabeth, fielded a team at St George’s Park that also only featured one player with a 40-plus average – captain Joe Root.

And worst: England averaged less collectively than their batting counterparts in terms of the average between the top seven batsmen’s averages.

And, believe or not: that is based on the real South African batting line up and doesn’t include impromptu stars Keshav Maharaj, Dane Paterson and Anrich Nortje.

I kid you not. Dean Elgar, Pieter Malan, Zubayr Hamza, Du Plessis, Rassie van der Dussen, Quinton de Kock and Vernon Philander started the PE Test with a combined average of 34.8, with Du Plessis tipping the scale at 40.6 and Malan at 44.5 after his Newlands debut.

Zak Crawley, Dom Sibley, Joe Denly, Root, Ben Stokes, Ollie Pope and Jos Buttler had a collective average of 32.9 after the Cape Town Test, with Root their standout player at 48.4.

Both teams featured three very experienced batsmen, even though the Proteas had Malan, Hamza and Van der Dussen, with only seven Tests in total, and England’s Crawley, Sibley and Pope only had 11 outings.

SA had three players with more than 1 000 runs and three centurions, while England fielded three players with four-figure tallies on their CVs and four centurions.

England’s top seven had an advantage in terms of runs scored with 14 675, compared to 12 495, while they held a total of 27 hundreds and 90 half-centuries compared to the 25 and 66 of the hosts’.

It’s plain to see that Root is the backbone of this England batting order, as his 7 455 runs before the PE Test were more than half of the top seven’s total number of runs and he had scored 62% of their hundreds and half of their fifties.

But he didn’t put the Proteas away in the Friendly City. It was Stokes and Pope who did the damage.

Why couldn’t just one of South Africa’s veterans and one rookie stand up and fight back?

They had the numbers on their side.