Leave Salman alone - and other notes from the festive season cricket
Takeaways from New Zealand in Pakistan and South Africa in Australia
It’s been a most unusual festive season as far as cricket is concerned. Most years, it’s a marathon of Test-watching, with matches going on in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. There’s barely any time for sleep – but then this is the one time of year when it’s okay to let go and get stuck into some serious sofa time.
Not this time around. With South Africa touring Australia and New Zealand away in Pakistan, it wasn’t quite round-the-clock cricket. Moreover, you had to be either a rabid Australia fan or a sadist to want to watch Dean Elgar’s Saffas take the whipping they did. The two drawn contests in Karachi were far more interesting for the neutral, and got more of my attention. (So too did my work!)
With the Christmas/New Year Tests behind us, then, here are just three thoughts I’m dragging into the second week of 2023.
Lighten up on Salman!
When Agha Salman produced a wild hoik in the closing stages of Pakistan’s tantalising but doomed run chase in the second Test against New Zealand, both his batting partner and the media came down hard on him.
A series win was on the line, they said. And he’d blown it with an irresponsible, unnecessary shot, they said. And why was it unnecessary? Because there were 11 overs remaining, and Pakistan were on track with a low-risk game. They could reach their target in singles, more or less, and they already had three from the first three balls of that over. Salman’s flamboyant dismissal on the fourth made his exhausted partner Sarfaraz Ahmed, who had battled his way to within sight of the target with a terrific hundred, turn visibly apoplectic.
Photo source: @TheRealPCB clip on Twitter
But I’ve got a problem with the criticism. The number of overs remaining in the day, following the calling of the ‘last fifteen’ by the umpires, was only ever an upper limit. We all knew that at some unknown moment, the men in black and white would come together, wield light meters and start frowning. The keyword here is ‘unknown’.
How can a batsman be blamed for not doing the maths when there are variables in the equation?
Despite the critics hanging their hats on ‘overs remaining’, and judging Salman’s shot selection on that, both the batting and fielding sides were guessing. Because this was a Test match, and we know all too well that ‘bad light’ can override the ‘last fifteen overs’ in a Test. And that given when stumps were pulled on previous days in the series, this was highly likely to happen on day five too.
More than enough has been written about how unfair the ‘bad light’ phenomenon is on Test spectators. And rightly so. But what happened in Karachi was a reminder of just how cruel it is on players too. And with blocking out draws falling out of favour these days, it’s an issue that will come up repeatedly unless something changes.
Can you imagine the outcry if the World Cup final in 2019 had been run on the same principles? England reach the last fifteen overs knowing exactly what has to be done. They manage their chase to perfection…until the goalposts are randomly moved. They’re suddenly told they have three overs less than originally quoted. But the target won’t be adjusted. Oops. Too late. Sorry lads.
That would be plainly ridiculous. Yet this is exactly what we still allow to happen in Tests. We’re getting more and more close white-ball style run chases, which is a good thing. Yet a) broadcasters are still patchy when it comes to displaying the overs/balls countdown on screen and b) that countdown is subject to bad light intervening. One minute the world is flocking to television screens to witness the denouement of a chase where everyone knows the score; the next, they’re watching a glum round of handshakes.
There’s nothing wrong with a draw. The possibility of one is essential to the dynamic of any first-class cricket. But only when the last day run its scheduled course. Teams ideally want to win — and they should know the equation for doing so at all times.
Rain is one thing, but letting something as addressable as the ‘bad light’ issue make the ‘equation’ a study in guesswork is unfair on teams and players chasing victory as well as those watching. (Though you wouldn’t blame any white-ball junkie for saying ‘WTF?’ and vowing never to dabble in the crazy long-form stuff again.)
So leave Salman alone, and save the barbs for those who allow such madness to continue.
Did South Africa just top the misery of 2001/02?
Those of us with long enough memories of South African cricket experienced something like a circle closing over the past couple of weeks.
You couldn’t help but think back to the dire trip the Proteas undertook twenty-one years ago. The one that hastened Graeme Smith into the captaincy, ultimately culminating in three straight revenge series wins on Aussie soil for the South Africans. Reflect on that, and you can’t help feeling that a cycle is complete.
There are plenty of reasons why you might be cynical about the possibility of a similar revival this time around. But for the purposes of this article, let’s just compare the tours with a little context: was this one as bad as the 2001/02 crusade led by Shaun Pollock?
Both series were characterised by regular batting implosions. In both, there was a sense that South Africa’s bowlers could be as good as they liked, but if wickets were going to tumble with such woeful regularity then it was ultimately hopeless. In both, it was like the batters were deers in headlights.
But what constitutes a batting implosion has been redefined by the latest bunch. It took them until the fourth innings of the tour, a low-pressure affair in a lost cause at the MCG, to scrape over the 200 barrier. In Brisbane, they couldn’t even reach triple figures in the second knock. Compare that to the corresponding ‘live’ matches two decades ago: only one innings of four was south of 200. So the bad batting was better back then, though you might say that applied to Test cricket in general too. Passing 300 was nothing to shout about when you were up against Langer, Hayden, Ponting, the Waughs, Gilchrist…
Still, perhaps 2001/02 edges it because race politics added an unpleasant undercurrent to the tour. Remember the drama around Justin Ontong being forced into the side for the final match in Sydney, at the insistence of United Cricket Board of South Africa President Percy Sonn? This time, at least the embarrassing headlines were all earned out in the middle.
Plus, there was the Warne-McGrath axis of destruction. 17 wickets for the Victorian, 14 for the New South Welshman. An astounding 31 sticks across three tests: in tandem they were a force of nature. (Comparison to this series and an attack working on a more human level: Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon got 30 combined.) Your getting out to Shane McGrath seemed almost inevitable – and that much more personal, too. At least South Africa’s batsmen can go away from this with a long list of things to work on, both for individuals technically and in terms of the entire system.
Another point: the side of 2001/02 went to Australia with a little more expectation and hope than this one did. The batting order had plenty of problem spots, but names like Kirsten, Kallis and Boucher still offered some glue. That set it up for a more painful fall than 2022/23, where not even the most optimistic of Proteas supporters could really scrape together a good prognosis. On the flip side, there’s some credit in the bank for these South Africans after the last three jaunts to Oz went so well. Pollock’s men had no past series wins with which to console themselves.
Also, the South Africans of yore had to face a return series immediately after. One that didn’t go a whole lot better than the away clashes. At least the Proteas can lick their wounds for a while after this bitterness – and then host the somewhat less threatening West Indies in February.
Finally, that series twenty-one years ago effectively ended Pollock’s career as a captain. I’m not sure Elgar will lose his job given the makeup of the current squad, even considering his worrying habit of flicking it off the hip to the keeper for low scores. That may say more about the options South Africa have at the moment than anything else – but they certainly wouldn’t say no to another Graeme Smith turning about right about now.
Despite the notably more dreadful batting this time around, I’m still leaning towards the 2001/02 tour as a lower low. But I’ve only scraped the surface of the comparisons, and I’m looking forward to some social media chat on this!
Much to ponder for Australia
South Africa’s woes notwithstanding, we have to acknowledge that this Australia side has developed into one of the greatest – on home soil at least. Don’t forget that despite the talk of a lopsided international schedule, the Aussie Test team doesn’t get a run-out all that often. Its last before this home summer was back in July against Sri Lanka; South Africa played more recently than that (England in September). Yet the Baggy Greens still produce polished cricket that shows hardly a trace of rust.
The success is a double-edged sword for Test cricket in Australia, however. Because South Africa’s decline means that the number of sides Cricket Australia can invite for a series that doesn’t descend into a one-sided steamrolling is now down to one: India. Much as the Aussie public must enjoy all the winning, promoters need a decent contest to sell tickets and stoke some hype. And it’s getting harder and harder to talk up the tourist opposition these days. (Trust me, I do it every year as a contributor to the match programmes!)
With international cricket facing enough challenges, it’s hardly ideal if most Test series in Australia follow a course so predictable it seems pointless even staging them. There have been way too many dead-rubber Sydney Tests in recent years.
While Australia being too good (at home) to hold anyone’s interest unless India visit is a tough problem for which to offer solutions, I trust all the neutrals will join me in hoping Bazball proves competitive in England’s toughest hunting ground come the next Ashes Down Under…