Speeding to victory: Wood inspires England
South Africa go six down after tourists score 400 Paceman scores 35 before taking 94.4mph wicket
Mark Wood produced the secondquickest wicket-taking delivery by an England bowler to fire his side into a strong position in the final Test against South Africa.
On a day when England were relieved to learn that Ben Stokes had escaped a ban for his foul-mouthed tirade at a supporter, Wood dismissed Pieter Malan with a 94.4mph delivery, the quickest wicket-taking ball by an Englishman since Steve Harmison in Perth more than 13 years ago. Wood finished the day with three for 21 to leave South Africa 88 for six, still 312 runs behind England’s first-innings score.
Wood had earlier hit three sixes in a last-wicket stand of 82 with Stuart Broad. Wood scored an unbeaten 35 as he set a record for the 10th-wicket partnership at the Wanderers with Broad, who helped himself to 43 against a demoralised South Africa. Wood was passed fit only on the morning of the match and England were worried about how his body would cope with two Tests in little more than a week. But he is bowling quicker than ever.
“I want to affect games of cricket for England, and winning the series would mean a hell of a lot to me,” he said. “It’s something you aspire to do, affect games. To be able to win a series away from home against a quality opposition would be especially pleasing for me after coming through some hard times. Plus having an iconic stadium and quick pitch, gives you extra incentive to impress.”
Wood revealed his batting had been improved by hours spent in the indoor cricket centre in Newcastle with his wife Sarah and father Derek feeding the bowling machine and banging the ball in short to prepare him for quick South African pitches.
“I was buzzing with the six over extra cover point. Externally you have to act all professional and that, but internally I was like, ‘ What a shot that was’. I was trying not to look too buzzing,” he said. “[In the nets] my wife’s laughing, telling me to get in line. She’s hit me a couple of times, my dad as well is particularly spicy but Chris Silverwood is the worst because he laughs when he hits you. You would think the England coach would be more supportive but he just laughs, he’s still got a fast bowler in him I think.”
Wood’s Durham team-mate Stokes had earlier been fined 15 per cent of his match fee, around £2,250, and handed one demerit point for swearing at a supporter on the first day. Stokes pleaded guilty to a level-one charge for uttering an “audible obscenity” when he told a supporter: “Come and say that to me outside the ground you f-----four-eyed c---.” He now has one point on his disciplinary record. Four points over two years triggers a suspension.
It has long been a see-saw battle between England and South Africa. Since the latter’s readmission, England have won four Test series and South Africa four. What is more, the other four series have been drawn, such has been the closeness in style, substance and results.
Go even further back and it was still nip and tuck. Nineteenth-century games between England and South Africa should not be counted as Tests – and only retroactively were they counted – but starting in 1930, say, England have won 11 series to South Africa’s seven.
No more see-sawing now though, and not for the foreseeable future either. When England win this series – and the margin alone is in doubt – a new pattern will surely be set for a long time to come.
England lost the opening Test of this series owing, to some extent, to the infection they brought off the plane on to which they had been packed only eight days after returning from New Zealand. But South Africa have been hit with something far more debilitating – Kolpakitis. And although informal discussions between the two boards have started, there is no cure in sight for South African cricket.
The effect of Kolpakitis was brutally illustrated in the middle session of day two here when England’s 10th-wicket pair, Mark Wood and Stuart Broad, slogged 82 runs off 51 balls, which is only 8.3 overs. In the previous Test at Port Elizabeth, South Africa’s 10thwicket partnership had been equally frolicsome, but the match was dead in that the result had already been decided – in England’s favour by an innings – whereas it was very much alive when Broad joined Wood at 318 for nine.
This was when South Africa’s last remaining wheel came off. The assault by England’s final pair was demoralising and the cascade of wickets in South Africa’s first innings an almost inevitable consequence. A great innings is required to turn the tide of a series and it did not look like it would be forthcoming amid such rubble.
When Wood thrashed three sixes and Broad four – seven sixes and four fours flooded off those 51 balls – it was made manifest that several of the home side’s bowlers are not up to Test standard. And they would never have been playing if South Africa had not been stricken with Kolpakitis.
In the first division of the County Championship last summer, four of the 13 leading wicket-takers were Kolpaks. Indeed the top two bowlers were Kolpaks: Simon Harmer, the off-spinner who took 83 wickets for Essex, and Kyle Abbott, who took 71 for Hampshire. Morne Morkel, meanwhile, took 44 for Surrey, and Duanne Olivier 43 for Yorkshire. In the championship’s second division, four of the leading 31 bowlers were Kolpaks.
South Africa, instead, had Beuran Hendricks and Dane Paterson to bowl at Wood and Broad. Left-arm swing bowlers are particularly liable to underperform on their Test debuts because only a slight, nervous difference in their wrist position reduces their swing and effectiveness, but Hendricks – filling in for the banned Kagiso Rabada – struggled to do anything of consistent quality on his home pitch, which is designed for pace bowling. Paterson offered some consistency of length but not much else. The damage goes deeper. Hendricks went into this match with fine first-class figures of 301 wickets at 23 each, while Paterson had 351 at 24. The standard of batting, therefore, in South Africa’s domestic cricket is not high if bowlers below Test class can dominate so easily. Put 10 Kolpak bowlers back into their first-class system and standards would rise all round, in their six main domestic teams and in the national side.
England’s victory in this series, while a commendable rallying after the opening defeat in Centurion, is therefore something of a hollow one. South Africa’s loss of so many Kolpak cricketers has hollowed out their sport, and made the national team as susceptible to defeat as England, on their arrival, were to viruses.
England’s players have done what they have had to do, with everincreasing proficiency. But for the observer with any objectivity, it is not the greatest fun to watch another country’s Test cricket plummet into serious decline. For almost the past hundred years these two teams had been well matched. Not any more.
As this series has worn on, the parallels have grown between South African Test cricket now and that of West Indies cricket 15 years or so ago. Local crowds are giving up on their national team, though there were a few determined pitch invaders here yesterday. If England’s supporters had not been in South Africa in their thousands, the Tests would have been poorly attended, especially the third in Port Elizabeth.
Cricket will live on in South Africa but, if a prophecy has to be ventured, it will be in white-ball formats, not red. Nobody with a blank sheet of paper, supposing Test cricket did not exist, would dream up five-day matches to have a role in a society whose economy has been debilitated by “the state capture” of the Zuma years, and still is.