By Christopher Martin-Jenkins
ONE-DAY games would never have been needed if five-day matches had always produced cricket of the zest, quality, attack and counter-attack which the second Test produced when, finally and belatedly, it started after lunch at Lord's yesterday.
Shortly before tea South Africa, put into bat by Alec Stewart, were 46 for four, undermined by snappy outswing bowling by Dominic Cork worthy of F S Trueman in his prime. Barely half an hour later they were past a hundred as Jonty Rhodes, the born-again Test batsman, led his captain Hansie Cronje on a daring and brilliant assault.
It had the effect of a sudden raid at night on a force who believed the enemy to be safely surrounded. When the weather interrupted play for the third time South Africa had reached 135 for four and the game, like the weather, was in the balance.
It was questionable whether Rhodes and Cronje, having grabbed back the initiative, were wise to accept the offer to go off for bad light. This time the majority of a crowd who had assembled late because of the morning rain decided that it was time to go home and, sadly, they were right. The hovercover, bought by MCC for a mere £100,000 or so, sailed smoothly back on its cushion of air to cover for the final time a pitch which had produced some sparkling cricket in four all too brief sessions.
The latest investment in state-of-the-art equipment at Lord's has worked well but it had no defence against the vagaries of a June day or the tendency of professional umpires and cricketers to cease playing at every possible opportunity. The bigger the occasion, it sometimes seems, the more likely they are to delay playing and it was frustrating for all that though the serious rain had stopped by the time that Prince Philip had declared the new grandstand open - and departed a little reluctantly for Royal Ascot - damp patches on the bowlers' run-ups held up play for 2.5 hours.
England did enough after that, perhaps, to justify Stewart's decision to bowl first but the close-of-play score was far more reflective of the pitch than the one which showed up brightly on the two electronic scoreboards after Cork's opening burst of four for 23. The relaid pitch has more pace than the tired ones they have replaced and Cork and Fraser got the new ball to bounce and seam as Cork especially took the chance of bowling under heavy clouds with rain never far away.
Batting was difficult but far from impossible and the natural brilliance and aggressiveness of Rhodes's batting proved it. It would be harsh to criticise England's bowlers for being a little too aggressive for their own good as he and Cronje added an undefeated 89 in only 17 overs but it is certainly true of Dean Headley and probably of Mark Ealham too. It is one thing to pitch the ball up and give it a chance to swing, quite another to bowl half-volleys.
Rhodes in his present mood of quick-eyed, quick-footed, controlled combativeness, however, is a hard man to bowl to. He escaped a rapid chance to Atherton's left hand at third slip in Headley's first over when he had scored only 10 but his enterprise deserved some luck. He has scored his runs from only 54 balls and already hit seven fours, and a six pulled off Cork five rows back into the grandstand. If Rhodes goes on to make a hundred this morning it is bound to be a memorable one.
Cronje fed off his enterprise, overcoming a hesitant start - he is vulnerable to the short ball early in an innings and England know it to play some beautiful drives and unstoppable cuts. He would, he said, have batted anyway had he won the toss.
Stewart had guessed correctly that the ball would swing in the moist atmosphere but that it zipped about too was a bonus. When rain intervened after 6.5 overs Cork had bowled Gary Kirsten in his second over as South Africa's only established opening batsman tried to withdraw his bat from a ball which bounced unexpectedly, and then hit Jacques Kallis's off stump in his third. Beaten by the two previous balls, Kallis was halfway through his forward stroke when the next one left him late.
Gliding in on an angle from the Nursery End, quicker than the hovercover and almost as smooth, Cork was soon justifying a field including three slips and a gully and it was only when Headley took over from Angus Fraser at the Pavilion End after tea that the pressure was relaxed. By that time Cork had added two more wickets.
Adam Bacher had done well, lasting 15 overs until he tried to repeat a drive through the covers to a ball of perfect length and edged it to give Stewart, the first of two smart catches which proved his suspect back to be fully mobile again. Daryll Cullinan also followed an outswinger, having had more time than most to play the ball but also surviving a possible catch at short-leg by England's new cap, Steve James. Cullinan had turned a ball from Cork hard into James's right shin, whence it seemed to bounce into his hands off his boot. But the first used of the new fixed cameras, yet another of MCC's investments, proved inconclusive.
The Lord's crowd took the disappointment of seeing only 34 overs with customary equanimity. They do not swear, put on fancy dress or chant monotonously for hours at a time here but there are times when one wonders about their priorities nonetheless. When play did finally start at 1.30, there must have been 500 still having lunch in the Harris gardens. Why spoil a good picnic to see Cork bowling unplayable late outswingers when you have waited 2.5 hours for play to begin?
Day 2: Rhodes and Cronje in overdrive as South Africans assume control
By Christopher Martin-Jenkins
SOUTH African courage in adversity has been a theme of cricket history and it was wonderfully maintained by Jonty Rhodes and Hansie Cronje at 'New Lord's' yesterday. Having pulled their team from the mire with a fifth-wicket partnership of 184, they set up an electric final hour of the second day during which England rapidly plunged into turbulence of their own against Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock.
England will resume this morning at 40 for three, 320 runs behind, with their two most experienced batsmen already out and a night-watchman at the crease. Mike Atherton may no longer be in charge but England continue to seem vulnerable the moment he is out and he will not have been pleased with the distribution of his weight as Pollock got a ball to lift sharply around his off-stump in the fourth over and he could only edge it to gully.
Steve James had launched his Test career with two confident clips off his legs for four while Pollock was getting his bearings but then he almost immediately followed his former Cambridge captain to the pavilion as a lifting ball of 85mph velocity brushed his glove and chest, giving Mark Boucher just sufficient time to take off far to his left and make a spectacular leg-side catch.
Alec Stewart showed commendable confidence and responsibility in marching out now, at 15 for two with only eight overs of the second day left. He might also have been caught down the leg side off a glove by Boucher for five. Instead, six overs and five runs later, he was given out leg before on the back foot by George Sharp, a decision which looked absolutely right unless Stewart had got the thinnest of inside edges.
The England captain's brief but obvious expression of disbelief might have had something to do with the fact that the same umpire had refused an appeal by Dean Headley for what looked the plumbest of lbws against Rhodes when he had made 95. That was either bad or merciful umpiring, depending on your loyalties.
Perhaps, too, Rhodes had made his own luck. It would be fairer to give credit to him, and to Cronje - later to Boucher and Lance Klusener too for their, who made excellent thirties later in the day from the humble positions of eight and nine - than to blame the England bowlers or the switch yesterday morning to relatively defensive fields.
That said, however, a failure to see the job through has been no less the recurrent feature of England's cricket of late than resilience has been of South Africa's. England had earned their opportunity at 46 for four on Thursday but a half-chance dropped when Rhodes was 10 and over-excited bowling thereafter had pushed the door of the gaol ajar even before yesterday's play began.
It did so, happily, in light and warmth altogether more appropriate to the approaching mid-summer. A shirt-sleeved crowd quietly admired a morning of steady batting in which South Africa added 89 more runs from 29 overs. The mood had changed with the weather, too: the rat-at-at-at of boundaries the previous evening was replaced by the pitter-patter of Rhodes's feet as a change of tactics obliged him to proceed in quickly taken twos and threes against more defensive fields.
The theory, presumably, was to try to shackle Rhodes and force him thereby into something impetuous. The occasional outswinger from both Dominic Cork and Angus Fraser got past Cronje in the early overs but there were only two slips there to catch any possible edges and the attempt to starve his impish partner of runs, shrewd in theory, did not work in practice.
Rhodes is in wonderful form - this innings followed brilliant innings of 59 and 123 against Gloucestershire and 95 in the first Test at Edgbaston. He has, too, a variety of instinctive scoring shots which come from flexible wrists trained in his other sport of hockey. When he has been out of form that has often led him in the past into a fatal deflection; now it enabling him to work the ball into gaps; and barely has ball left blade before he is half-way through the first run.
Cronje, stating his intent with a decisive early hook for four off Fraser, played watchfully, placing the ball carefully and leaning on it when driving opportunities came in a way which makes him, at his best, reminiscent of Tom Graveney. By the time he drove the belatedly used Mark Ealham to extra cover, six overs into the afternoon, the partnership had become a record for South Africa's fifth wicket against any country anywhere.
It was not until England were able to take a second new ball, at 266 for five, that they made any serious progress. Cork, having been overbowled in the morning, removed Pollock with a classical late outswinger, edged to second slip, and Rhodes finally gave Fraser a hard-earned first wicket when he brought a ball back down the slope to take the inside edge. He had batted just under five hours and restricted himself to only seven fours during the second and longer phase of a laudable second Test hundred.
Headley was the fastest and best of England's bowlers yesterday and deserved the two wickets he took to end the valuable and attractive eighth-wicket partnership by Klusener and Boucher. Both are imposters so low in the order. Cork's sixth wicket and, a brilliant, low catch by Stewart, finally wrapped the innings up but it left South Africa's formidable opening pair with a session of ideal length.
Whether they can make further swift progress is the first question to be answered this morning. A second successive victory against England at Lord's is possible but it will not easily be gained in view of probable hot weather and a pitch which has become something close to perfect. Like Donald and Pollock themselves, it has pace, as good pitches should provided the bounce is reliable, and the one consistent factor of the match so far is that the new ball has swung, under skies both cloudy and blue.
A day for Mark Ramprakash to repeat his match-turning performance in Barbados perhaps? Certainly one for Nasser Hussain, who heartened home supporters with one majestic square-cut off Donald, not to mention Graham Thorpe and the Middlesex captain, to prove what is often claimed about the strength of England's top six.
Day 3: England fight to exorcise curse
By Scyld Berry
IT has long been customary to rank the Lord's Test alongside Ascot, Wimbledon and Henley as a highlight of the English sporting summer. It should be re-classified immediately as a lowlight.
In recent years in Lord's Tests England have been dismissed for 77 by Australia, seen nine of their wickets seized in a session by Pakistan, and been annihilated by South Africa the last time they visited. When England were routed yesterday for 110, it was an occasion up with the best of them, or down with the worst.
Perhaps Lord's is cursed. Certainly English cricket is; or, at any rate, not blessed with two fast bowlers such as Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock. Yesterday morning offered a perfect time to bowl, and the pair of them did so with overwhelming hostility on a pitch that had enough bone in it for one bouncer by Pollock to rocket over his wicketkeeper.
But it was not mere speed alone that chained a batsman so gifted as Mark Ramprakash to one scoring shot in his first 80 minutes at the crease. Donald and Pollock are also exceptional in their technical accomplishment as they keep the seam of the ball upright and make it move; if they and their supporting acts had pitched two feet further up, they could have run through any side.
But in other ways too, English cricket is not sufficiently blessed. When the going gets tough, South Africa get going, and England go soft. It was on the first day that England lost hold of this match, when the tourists were 46 for four and thereabouts, and England's fielding - more than the bowling - visibly lost the necessary edge. The difference in crispness between the two teams' fielding is that between toast and bread; but then the South Africans can rest, prepare and practise as they like between Tests (Donald and Pollock had one day's play between them yet re-found their rhythm), rather than play B&H semi-finals in the service of a second master.
Above all, though, is England's collective inability to seize the moment - or even, at Edgbaston on the second day, to sense it. When South Africa's innings was in crisis, Jonty Rhodes played his shots and scampered urgent singles; no Englishman reacted so, and the slide continued until Mike Atherton joined with Nasser Hussain in second innings resistance.
It is still hard to fathom what England have done with the resources they do have. At their disposal is an opening batsman who has been the finest strokeplayer against a new ball anywhere through the Nineties. Yet the selectors chose to make him keep wicket and to pit a debutant against South Africa's strongest suit.
In Mark Butcher's absence England have one left-handed batsman left to disrupt Donald and his line of attack. But it was only when they were 48 for four that he was introduced, when too few wickets remained in hand for Graham Thorpe to play his natural attacking game.
England batted better a second time round partly because the sun shone and the bowling lost some bite, and partly because one of their number had to reach 20 eventually by the law of averages. First time round the cloud was heavy, and the ball swung as it has done throughout the match, but in venomous hands. Even carousers in the full crowd were hushed at the sight of such phenomenal bowling that three shots each from Thorpe and Ramprakash were the only sure strokes of the whole morning.
Hussain had something to atone for in his second innings as his first dismissal was a hot-blooded one. Nothing wrong with being pinned against the ropes by Donald and Pollock, but his attempt to break free was impulsive not calculated.
Dean Headley contributed two runs, compared with the two hundreds which his grandfather made in his last Lord's Test, but he accepted without palaver the bouncers which Donald returned at him with interest. Once Headley had edged a half-drive, Ramprakash joined Thorpe in a partnership which had to be as significant as their one in Barbados if England were to achieve parity in their first innings.
Thorpe was dismissed by a stunning right-handed catch by Adam Bacher at short-leg, but by then he had twice been lucky not to be given out, when struck on his pad first ball - Pollock had remembered how Thorpe had twice been yorked at Edgbaston - and when he had gloved a bouncer down the legside according to a television replay. England, overall, were not unlucky therefore when Ramprakash, having survived until lunch, was given caught behind off a ball which brushed his elbow.
Ramprakash was summoned by the ICC Match Referee Javed Burki after his excessive slowness in reacting to umpire Darrell Hair's decision. It was comparable to the verbal reprimand which Thorpe had received when given out in the Antigua Test of April, when the batsman's disappointment was actually compounded more by disbelief rather than dissent.
It is probably because the English tail is so defensive that it is less productive than others. Only a couple of blows were struck in anger before the innings was over - for the fourth time in England's Test history extras were the highest scorer - and England were starting again, productively on this occasion, following the departure of Steve James, who was saddled with the knowledge that the next ball might be his last in Test cricket.
After James had edged an outswinger to second slip, Atherton and Hussain put together the partnership that took England off the slide and gave them a breather.
The sun shone after tea, the ground was meet for a picture, it was just up to England to match the progressive architecture of Lord's with a substantial structure of their own.
Atherton, after being severely bruised on the right wrist by Donald, settled into the role he loves best, defying the opposition his wicket with all the time in the world at his disposal. Hussain played the greater number of shots without taking risks - they scored together at two runs an over between them - while the South African pace bowlers hammered away, but this time encountered resistance.
Day 4: History repeats itself in England collapse
By Christopher Martin-Jenkins
THE deja vu was uncanny as South Africa completed a crushing victory over England on a hot Sunday afternoon at Lord's yesterday to a background of disciplinary action by the match referee.
Both sides have different captains, the grandstand has been replaced and a giant spaceship seems to have landed at the Nursery End, but the gulf between the two teams seems, from the look of the scorecard at least, to be no less wide after South Africa's 10-wicket win yesterday than it was after their 356-run thrashing of Mike Atherton's team four years ago.
South Africa won this time because they are a tough, resilient side whose talents are far better suited than England's to a hard, true, pacy pitch like this one. In trouble only when the new ball was swinging under the clouds of the first afternoon, they were led with great enterprise from the peril of 46 for four by Jonty Rhodes and then overwhelmed the England batting with some fast swing bowling and a display of fabulous ground fielding.
One could argue whether there have been cover-points with deadlier throws than Rhodes, indubitably man of the match, but not whether anyone has ever got to the ball, and then in position to throw it, more quickly. He was never more effervescent than during the later stages of the two England partnerships - between Atherton and Nasser Hussain on Saturday afternoon after the first innings collapse to 110 all out, and between Hussain and Alec Stewart yesterday - which made the South African bowlers work hard for victory.
Paul Adams, Jacques Kallis and Lance Klusener filled the breach when the prime strike bowlers had grown tired and for Kallis, whose brisk outswing bowling was polished by Middlesex at Lord's last season, a match which had started with a deflating duck finished with a spell of four for three and career-best figures.
A wave of derision for England is bound to follow and to a large extent they deserve it. They were rapidly undone by aggressive, fast swing bowling by Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock in the first innings on Saturday, then teased by a great deal of bowling wide of the off stump to relatively defensive fields yesterday before losing four wickets for three runs in 22 balls. The 116-run partnership for the fourth wicket between Hussain and Stewart started when the night watchman Dean Headley was caught off bat and pad in the second over and was not broken for 41 overs which at least gave the crowd some decent English batting to remember.
It is a chastening thought for England - as if they needed further torment - that had Mark Ramprakash not been dropped before he had scored in the first innings and Hussain and Stewart not survived chances in successive overs from Klusener yesterday morning - Stewart at slip when 17 and Hussain at long-leg when 67 - the game might have been over soon after lunch on the fourth day rather than seven balls after tea.
Stewart appeared not to hit the ball to which he was out - it kept on leaving him after passing his bat so the decision was quite understandable - but he was lucky not to be given out lbw to the luckless Pollock when he had made only five - and Hussain was almost equally fortunate to get the benefit of the doubt when he hit across Adams after adding only 11 to his overnight 52.
Hussain's eventual hundred, his first for England at Lord's and his seventh in three years since his return to the side against India in 1996, was destined to be played in defeat. He hit 17 fours, six of them against the new ball yesterday either side of lunch, and showed the patience and concentration which has enabled him to overcome a still slightly unorthodox technique and make the most of a special talent.
He was the third to fall in the collapse which began 11 overs after lunch with Stewart's dismissal. Graham Thorpe was leg before in Kallis's next over, and in the next two overs Hussain, too, was leg before, half-forward, and the hapless Ramprakash was yorked.
Ramprakash was not told until after his innings of the decision by the match referee, Javed Burki, to punish him with a fine of £850, 25 per cent of his match fee, and a one-game suspension, for waiting too long at the crease after being given out - erroneously, replays suggested on Saturday. More serious was the ill-judged remark he made as he passed umpire Darrell Hair, to the effect, apparently, that such decisions might break a man's Test career. In fact he had hung on more staunchly than most in the first innings and was hardly in danger of losing his place.
This was an unwelcome return to the insecure Ramprakash who seemed to have left his troubles behind him in the Caribbean and it confirmed that possible England captaincy is a long way off. He was matched for visible dissent yesterday by Donald, who made a great drama of his dismay when Hussain was quite rightly given not out for a rebound to short-leg off his thigh pad.
Stewart was very unwise to shake his head several times on the way back to the pavilion, frequently looking back to see a replay on the giant screen as he went and lingering at the portals of the Long Room for the same purpose, his every move seen on television. The coach, or the chairman of selectors, or even the chairman of the ECB, ought to have been telling Stewart as soon as he reached the dressing-room that this was a poor example to set. At least in his post-match interviews he gave no more than the merest hint that he or his side had suffered any injustice.
Mr Burki took no action after making an example of Ramprakash but he will issue a reminder about behaviour to both captains before the third Test. He would do well, too, to stress what is now a fact of life for the international cricketer that the television cameras will miss nothing, nor shy away from controversy.
The only problem for South Africa yesterday was an injury suffered by Adam Bacher as he fell hard on his right shoulder, diving to save a run by the boundary rope. While Hansie Cronje and his players celebrated, England were left to wonder if their batting will ever live up to its paper strength when the chips are really down. It is, however, worth remembering that the series was drawn after South Africa had taken the lead last time, that the home side had the better of the first Test at Edgbaston, that there are still three Tests to come and that they played this game on a hard, fast, true pitch without two first-choice bowlers.
The selectors expect Darren Gough to be fit for the third Test, starting at Old Trafford on Thursday week, and because the pitches there also tend to favour the fast bowler and the wrist spinner, they are still clinging to the hope that Ian Salisbury will have recovered from his groin strain just in time. Conditions at Trent Bridge and, especially, Headingley, may be more in favour of the home bowlers and one of the few consolations to England's strategists is that they will not finish the series at the Oval.