The set up was as teasing as a Victorian melodrama. Two games, two last-over wins, one to each side. The dramatic tension was maintained throughout the first act, the audience divided as to which way the plot would go. But after the interval we went straight to the final scene, the one where the stage is filled with New Zealand corpses. South Africa won by 159 runs, the most lopsided match I have seen since Southee and McCullum filleted England in the World Cup two years ago.
South Africa
won the toss and batted. Their openers were Hashim Amla and Quinton de Kock. I
first saw Amla as a CricInfo reporter when I covered some of South Africa Under
19s’ tour of New Zealand in 2001. His talent was as abundant as his fielding
was inept. Today he went cheaply, caught at mid off from a leading edge having
contributed just seven of an opening partnership of 41.
New Zealand
fed de Kock’s strength by bowling him lots of short stuff. This isn’t as daft
as it sounds, the theory being that the batsman will take more risks within his
comfort zone. It didn’t work today though. De Kock made 68 at almost a run a
ball. He put on 73 with Faf du Plessis before both went to soft dismissals in
the 23rd over, bowled by Colin de Grandhomme—the South Africans
didn’t have a monopoly on the nobiliary particle today.
AB de
Villiers was in at No 4 for his last game in Wellington (he’s not hanging
around for the tests). I didn’t see the half century he made in the Basin test
last time South Africa were here, and the empty 99 in the World Cup against UAE
doesn’t count, so I was keen that one of the greats should leave behind a
memory.
The regular
loss of partners meant that de Villiers did not show us the full range of his
inventiveness until the final few overs. He gets lower in the shot than anyone
I can think of, which means that the bowler has to be precise to several
decimal places in his pitching of the ball. An inch or too full and it might as
well be a knee-high full toss; the same the other way becomes the easiest of
half volleys. He made 85 from 80 balls and it was a treat.
The way the
South Africans went about things from early in their innings suggested that
they thought that a total of around 300 was going to be needed on a pitch that
shimmered in the afternoon sun, so restricting them to 271 could be considered
a good effort by the New Zealand attack.
Trent Boult
was outstanding, every bit the leading one-day bowler in the world, conceding only
22 from his first seven overs. Tim Southee was more profligate. Mitch Santner was
also very good with a mid-innings spell of seven overs going for just 28. Lockie
Ferguson came in for Ish Sodhi, but did nothing to justify the selection. It is
the nature of fast bowlers that they are hit and miss early in their careers as
they learn that sheer speed is sometimes not enough. Today, the quicker he
bowled, the quicker it came off the bat. He will have benefitted from studying
the work of Kagiso Rabada later in the day.
But New
Zealand’s best bowler, statistically at least, was the man least likely to be,
Colin de Grandhomme, whose ambling medium pace accounted for du Plessis and de
Kock. Having fought off a gang of muggers, they were felled by a handbag-wielding
granny. He got de Kock with a long hop, but that was the worst ball he bowled. De
Grandhomme made the best of a pitch that that was more balanced between bat and
ball than most of us thought, bowling accurately and cannily. I am as
enthusiastic about him as an ODI player as I am critical of his presence in the
test team.
So how did
Neesham, the all-rounder, do with the ball? Reader, we will never know, as he
did not bowl. It appears that for Williamson, Neesham is a weapon of last
resort, thrown in when all else has failed. He got away with it today,
shuffling the five bowlers astutely (he didn’t put himself on either), but that
is not a sustainable strategy for the one-day game.
Was 271
enough for South Africa? Most of us thought not, but as it turned out they
could have gone to the pictures instead of facing the last 20 overs and still
have won comfortably. I have often been critical of how the outcome of T20 games
is too often obvious by an early stage of the second innings, but that can
happen in 50-over cricket too, and so it did here.
Tom Latham
would need the Hubble telescope to see his form at the moment. It should be
David Attenborough rather than Ian Smith commentating when Latham bats, so
closely do his innings resemble the pursuit of a limping gazelle by a pride of
lionesses, the grizzly outcome inevitable. Today’s seven-ball duck left him
with a series aggregate of two from 29 deliveries. There is almost always a
penalty for giving the gloves to a specialist batsman. Latham’s keeping is satisfactory,
though he did miss a straightforward stumping today. Let us hope that the test
performance of New Zealand’s best opener since Mark Richardson is not the price
to be paid.
Brownlie
went caught behind off Rabada, so at 11 for two, Williamson and Taylor were
together, usually as reassuring as a log fire in winter. Yet today it was as if
they had something better to do and had sent a tribute band instead. They
looked like Williamson and Taylor, but the music wasn’t the same. Both faced 40
balls, for 23 and 18 respectively, miserable strike rates by their standards. I
often write that it was a surprise when Williamson got out, but today it wasn’t.
Towards the end of their partnership both began to flail at the ball, so
effective was the containment of the South African attack. Taylor was leg
before soon after and seemed relieved, hurrying past Neil Broom at the other
end so that there was no chance of being talked into a review. The rest was a
procession, the last six wickets falling for 64.
As ever,
there was talk about the pitch, on which 271 was a better score than at first
appeared, and from which the South Africans got more help than New Zealand. But
sometimes we look too closely at the pitch instead of the quality of the bowling.
For various reasons the South Africans are missing Steyn, Morkel, Philander and
Abbott, and chose not to play Morris, who has been taking wickets for fun so
far on the tour. Yet the attack that took the field was superb.
The all-Kent
opening team of Rabada and Parnell (two and five first-class appearances, seven
years apart) was outstanding. The last time I saw Rabada he was attempting to
coax some life out of the pitch at Tunbridge Wells, a task better suited to a
spiritualist than a fast bowler. He is fast, accurate and—best of all—highly
intelligent. Parnell was probing and accurate. In the first ten overs, between
them they removed the openers and established the frustration of Williamson and
Taylor.
The second
wave was even better. Andile Phehlukwayo has something about him. He is not yet
the finished article, but looks as if he absolutely belongs at the top level.
He kept a cool head when bashing a couple of sixes to win the first game of the
series. Today, he removed Williamson and Broom and conceded only 12 in his five-over
spell. At the other end, Dwaine Pretorious was even meaner with two for five
from five. Between them they put the match beyond New Zealand.
The home team came back strongly
in the fourth game, winning by seven wickets with five overs to spare, thanks
to a sublime unbeaten 180 by Martin Guptill. However at Eden Park in the series
decider, another outstanding bowling performance gave South Africa a three-two
series victory.
