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It might not be total cricket just yet, but this series victory is totally positive
Briefly, as South Africa steadied after lunch and england’s five seamers gave way to Joe Denly, among others, confident smiles became worried glances and a familiar thought occurred.
When is the right time to start panicking, watching england trying to win a Test match? Not then, it transpired, thankfully.
Soon after, faf du Plessis was heading back to the pavilion, swiftly followed by rassie van der Dussen and, after that, england were strolling comfortably to what eternal optimists now know as the sunlit uplands.
it was commemorative coins and Big Ben bongs all the way as england recorded a third straight Test win overseas for the first time since — well, last winter actually.
That was in Sri lanka, a whitewash that Joe root announced signalled the beginning of something called total cricket, with every man an all-rounder.
He then failed to wrest the Ashes from Australia for a second time — this series at home — and we haven’t heard much about it since. So let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
South Africa are in a very poor state and any assessment of england’s supremacy should take that into account, too. yet this has been a good tour, a bonding tour, an improving tour and three straight wins abroad isn’t such a common occurrence that it can be dismissed as a trifle.
Before Sri lanka, england last achieved it in 2004, in the Caribbean under Michael Vaughan. it was a green shoot that would blossom into an Ashes win the following year. Not that anyone is talking about returning from Australia with an urn just yet. But there is potential here, at last. it might not be total cricket, but it is totally positive, given how this tour began.
earlier this week, in a local restaurant called Big Mouth, england’s callow top-order batsmen sat having dinner. in a different era such an occasion might include copious orders of red wine and the avoidance of shop talk. instead, Zak Crawley, Dom Sibley and friends passed clips of that day’s batting performances around on their mobile phones. They were pointing out individual shots, what had gone right, what had gone wrong. There is an appetite to learn in this group, Graham
Thorpe, the batting coach, said the other day. He pointed out corrections made to style and technique that had not come from him, but from the learning experience of Test cricket. That might not stop Jonny Bairstow returning to open the batting in Sri lanka if Chris Silverwood, england’s coach, feels experience of Asian conditions will serve.
yet it is a positive step when, before the second Test, england’s tour looked to have been pitched into chaos by defeat and a freak injury to rory Burns.
There have been real finds on this trip, not least the emergence
of Ollie Pope as a batsman of wonderful potential — a possible No 3, once he becomes comfortable at six. One manoeuvre to avoid a short ball, Pope arching his back and contorting his upper frame like a cobra poised to strike, was evidence of a young man at the top of his game.
Seasoned Test cricketers said there was no way Pope should have avoided being struck, but he was in the moment, just him and the bowler, without distraction. It was a lovely vignette, the encapsulation of a batsman coming of age. We have found one here, no doubt about that.
Rediscovered one, too, if only Mark Wood can maintain the level of fitness that has seen him perform to full capacity in backto-back Tests.
Friday morning at the Wanderers, when the final match was due to start, there were serious concerns that he would be incapable of performing. It was a familiar story.
Wood had bowled well in Port Elizabeth but was now suffering the consequences. Yet he warmed up, declared himself fit and was a significant part of the action right until the last, taking the vital wicket of Rassie van der Dussen for 98, and putting England on course to win with a day to spare.
As is so often the case in these circumstances, with the outcome largely inevitable the locals deserted and left their territory to the raucous tourists. A band — no match for the lot from Port Elizabeth, sadly — had offered intermittent resistance but they gave up the ghost shortly before tea and some members could be spotted going home, instruments packed up and in hand. All that remained dotted around were the familiar tourists’ flags and some pretty gruesome- looking red shoulders, this being the hottest day of the Test so far.
The collapse, once it began, gathered speed at an alarming pace. From 181 for two to 274 all out via a run-out that is the prime indicator of what the Australians call mental disintegration.
ATleast South Africa put up some form of resistance, though, and made England work for their win — at first anyway. Yet a team who have not reached 300 with the bat in eight innings on home soil are never going to have much hope, and so it proved.
England have been the best team for three Tests straight and that has told in the result. The key now is to take the momentum to Sri Lanka and the summer, to build on it all the way to the Ashes in 2021.
That is what happened in the West Indies in 2004. Small beginnings became the start of something far bigger. Again, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But nor do we need to locate the panic button. Taken over the series, these kids have been more than all right.