Lights out on a perfect climax
Officials ruin big moment for England
ONLY cricket can find new ways of shooting itself in the foot just as the most exciting and invigorating of Test summers was about to reach the perfect climax.
The Oval was almost full, just 33 runs were needed by England with all wickets remaining, the floodlights were on and the openers were seeing it like a football when the umpires decided light was not good enough to conclude this deciding Test.
What a joke that is. What an embarrassment at the end of an extraordinary two days of Test cricket played in fast forward after the ECB took the correct decision to carry on in honour of the Queen.
The game got everything right in the most difficult of circumstances, from the moment Laura Wright sang the most spine-tingling of national anthems on Saturday to both England and South Africa putting on a show worthy of the occasion, albeit one played at a very modern, frenetic speed. Then they all walk off to come back for an anti-climax of a finish today.
Why couldn’t common sense prevail? Why couldn’t the umpires have gone on the evidence of their own eyes rather than their cursed light meters and decided, at 6.37pm, that conditions were good enough for another half hour or so to let England complete their win?
Surely even South Africa captain Dean Elgar would have preferred to get the game finished. Even the ultimate conservative pragmatist must have conceded, with no rain forecast for today, that it was best to play on for the greater good of Test cricket.
Ben Stokes’ look of incredulity on the Oval balcony was a picture. His mission all summer has been to promote and even save the oldest and greatest format of the game. He and Brendon McCullum have not only transformed England but rewritten the Test playbook and evidence suggests they are attracting as many new spectators to cricket as the Hundred.
This will hardly have helped their cause. Any newcomer watching riveted towards the end of a pulsating and compelling ‘second’ day would surely have been baffled and frustrated that play should end with floodlights shining down.
At least yesterday’s crowd got good value if not a conclusion, with England conceding the advantage given them — when they demolished South Africa for 118 — by giving away far too many wickets cheaply in their determination to be as aggressive and assertive as possible.
England’s lead was only 40 when they lost their last three wickets for four runs in 16 balls on what was officially the fourth morning of this third Test, and South Africa were clawing their way ahead when they made their way to 83 for one.
That was when a Dukes ball England had tried in vain to get changed — when it offered them little before lunch — started to swing round corners and Stuart Broad claimed the key wicket of Elgar that should never have been given.
Broad had seen two lbw appeals turned down by Nitin Menon before England went up so loudly and confidently for a third in the same over that the South African captain all but walked before the Indian umpire’s finger went up. Replays showed the ball would have missed leg stump.
It was a wicket that took Broad past Glenn McGrath and into second place, behind only Jimmy Anderson, in the all-time list of seam bowling Test wicket-takers.
Both Anderson and Broad were wicketless before lunch but now were near unplayable as South Africa tried to hang on.
Anderson claimed Keegan Petersen and Broad added Ryan Rickelton before Ollie Robinson added his seam bowling to the mix and dismissed both Wiaan Mulder and Khaya Zondo.
What a series Robinson is having on his return to this England side and how promising he should reach 50 Test wickets at fewer than 20 apiece.
If Broad, Anderson and Robinson were all mightily impressive, it was the captain who surely won this Test and the LV= Insurance series for his side with his intervention with a double wicket maiden either side of tea. Stokes was visibly wincing with the pain from the knee injury that will surely need surgery sooner rather than later. But he summoned up another huge effort to bowl Marco Jansen, the best South African batter in the series, with a big inswinger.
And it came the over after Stokes had seen Jansen caught by Ollie Pope, only for the wicket to be ruled out by a no ball.
It gave England their seventh wicket and their sixth of the afternoon session. It took Stokes just two balls after the break to add Kagiso Rabada as South Africa’s resistance was well and truly broken.
Broad and Anderson, given a new lease of life this summer, completed the job and confirmed the utter folly of England leaving both out for the dying embers of Joe Root’s captaincy in the Caribbean earlier this year.
That left England 130 to win — the same target, superstitious types noted, Australia needed at Headingley in 1981 — and 35 overs in which to wrap up victory. Maybe England would have suffered 1981-type nerves had Alex Lees been caught by Jansen off the first ball of the innings but he was dropped and England’s underperforming openers went on to play as well as at any time in this momentous summer.
Crawley raced to his 50 off 36 balls and Lees rode his luck to reach an unbeaten 32 alongside him, with South Africa well and truly beaten by the time of Menon and Richard Kettleborough’s unwelcome intervention.
It has been bonkers stuff but not nearly as bonkers as a decision, with Broad padded up to come in and complete the job in his ‘nighthawk’ role, that has left egg on the face of the game.
England will win their sixth Test out of seven this summer this morning but some of the gloss has been taken off that fantastic achievement by inflexibility from officialdom at the worst possible time.