South Africa may look back and rue missed opportunity
Tourists had the chance to stamp authority on this series but let it slip amid a series of errors
Eight thousand miles away in Pretoria, AB de Villiers reckoned 300 was a “good total”. Although given that last week, at around the same his team-mates were being rolled over for 119 at Lord’s, South Africa’s captain-in-exile was tweeting about a television talent show called The Voice, you had to question how closely he was really watching.
You could look at Chris Morris and Vernon Philander’s late rally in one of two ways. Either it edged the visitors back in front after a wobbly hour, or it demonstrated just how easy it was to bat on this pitch when you set your mind to it. And after an absorbing if rarely scintillating day by the Trent, South Africa will be ruing the fact that, while they are well in the game, they passed up an opportunity to put it to bed.
Quinton de Kock knew it. As he and Hashim Amla emerged after the tea break, South Africa were 179 for two, and the match was there for the taking.
Another hour or two together would have put South Africa on course for an unassailable total and swung the momentum of the series. Instead, De Kock swatted at Stuart Broad’s first ball of the session, and edged to slip. An infuriated De Kock walked off practising the shot again and again, perhaps oblivious to the fact that it might have been better not to play it at all.
Still, this is the way De Kock plays, and for a dreamy couple of hours it seemed to be working a treat. Everyone knows about his furious scoring rate, but what is perhaps most impressive about him is that he manages to be ultra-aggressive without being violent. Of course, he can butcher an attack when the fancy takes him, but here is the thing: most of the time, he does not have to.
Like most wicketkeepers, there is an implied, tightly coiled potency to him: the same strong legs and sturdy buttocks that you need to dive for a sharp leg-side chance. Throw in that powerful bottom hand and the natural timing that comes from a childhood spent playing baseball, and the result – in Test cricket at least – is that he only needs to ease his weight into the shot to send it hurtling towards the boundary. Then there is the restlessness. De Kock bats as if he has a clinical allergy to dot balls.
Defence is only ever a secondary instinct. Perhaps this is why he chased a wide one first ball after tea. It is the only game he knows.
If De Kock fell victim to his own enterprise, Amla’s dismissal six overs later displayed the very opposite symptoms. For much of the day, this had all the hallmarks of a classic Amla innings: playing the ball late to ride the movement, clipping straight balls to leg and forcing the bowlers wider, and then paddling them through the offside. But on 78, he lapsed. As he hooked a bouncer from Stuart
Broad, Amla held the pose, admiring his handiwork. He was still holding the pose, in fact, when the ball dropped in Mark Wood’s hands at long leg. Amla walked off, shaking his head sadly.
Which brings us to the curious conundrum that is late-career Amla: another start, another score, and yet again a strangely incomplete sensation.
Since the end of the last England series 18 months ago, Amla averages just 34 in Tests, with just one century in 22 innings: his leanest run since the tortuous start he made to his career more than a decade ago. Yes, he made 78. But he wanted more. And South Africa needed more.
In a way, it is a barometer of where South Africa are right now: good in spells, but still not quite there. At present, their unavailable XI (De Villiers, Dale Steyn, Kagiso Rabada et al) would probably beat their available XI.
Their senior players (Amla, JP Duminy, Morne Morkel) have slipped from their peak. Coach Russell Domingo has had to fly home after the untimely death of his mother. This is a South African side with a leadership vacuum at its heart.
And so with the sun out and on a surface more akin to the one upon which James Anderson almost scored a Test hundred in 2014 than the one where Broad took eight wickets in 2015, the day somehow ended with honours even.
Did England seize the advantage, or did South Africa relinquish it?
Probably a little of both. These things do not occur independently of each other, of course. Just as on the first day at Lord’s, England sensed South Africa’s inertia and took heart from it. Morris and Philander’s evening flurry redressed the balance a little, but England have a golden opportunity to dictate terms over the weekend.