THIS was Test cricket of the old-fashioned kind: correct, disciplined batting; a peaceful crowd of only about 11,000 at its peak; three spinners bowling 46 overs between them; 97 overs in the day; and, believe it or not, a good deal of sunshine. At the end of the day there was a tall score, 237 for one, and a record partnership for the batting side to celebrate, leaving the fielding side to reflect only on six hours of unremitting toil, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.
There would be no prize for guessing that the weary fielders and bowlers were English, the happy batsmen South African. It might possibly have been the same in reverse had not Hansie Cronje won a valuable toss and taken the obvious decision to make first use of the best first-day conditions of the series to date, but the fact is that South Africa went most of the way yesterday towards ensuring that the very least they will get from the Old Trafford Test match is a draw.
On a slow, bland, almost grassless pitch, Jacques Kallis made a stately second Test hundred which confirmed that at the age of 22 he is already a batsman of the highest class, and Gary Kirsten batted with single-minded determination, content with a pace of scoring almost exactly commensurate with the overs bowled. He starts this morning only two runs short of his seventh Test hundred.
Kallis played with the graceful command of a young champion, some of his on-side strokes played not with a turn of the wrists, but with a full flow of a straight bat reminiscent of Peter May, Greg Chappell or, among contemporaries, Inzamam-ul-Haq. Put a beard on him and I dare say there would even have been legitimate comparisons with W G at the same age, before the good life added to his bulk.
Kirsten, by contrast, played an innings more in the tradition of cussed left-handers of the past like Bill Lawry, Trevor Goddard or, in certain moods, John Edrich. He barely timed an attacking shot all day but in a way that made his dedicated, pragmatic innings all the more admirable. Despite a first-class average of 117, he had not made a decent score in any of the international matches on the tour before yesterday and he was absolutely determined to make the most of batting first on a pitch as placid as a stagnant pool which can only get more difficult as it gets more worn.
The partnership of 212 for the second wicket is a Test record for the second wicket by any team at Old Trafford and equals South Africa's second-wicket record, already co-owned by Kirsten, with Daryll Cullinan, who is due in next. There is ample batting to come, indeed, even though the tail has been extended to three by the inclusion of Makhaya Ntini, who wins his third Test cap because of the unexpected withdrawal of Shaun Pollock because of a thigh injury.
The news that Ian Salisbury was back in the Surrey side and immediately among the wickets made a bad day for England even worse, because he had been inked in for this match in advance of his groin injury. Even Shane Warne, however, might have provided only slightly more difficulty to the second wicket pair after they had joined forces in the ninth over when Gerry Liebenberg was defeated by a ball of full length from Darren Gough which swung away a fraction to hit his off stump.
Liebenberg was late on the shot too and Gough's pace, averaging around 85mph, was responsible for his getting more balls past the bat than the other bowlers put together. Not that he had many moments of hope: there can seldom have been a day's Test cricket in England in recent times when so little got past the edge.
Modern marketing methods, noisy crowds, the extra pace of scoring which limited-overs cricket has encouraged and the general impatience of players and spectators alike has made people forget that Test cricket often used to be like this. Once Gough, and the tidy but innocuous Cork and Fraser, had lost even the advantage of a hard new ball, the cricket up to lunch, played in a cool breeze before quiet spectators, was dull and attritional, though Robert Croft and Ashley Giles, deservedly winning his first Test cap and varying his pace and flight better as he settled down, both had a go before the first interval.
Kallis warmed to his task after lunch with a positive burst of strokes against bowlers of all pace and he beat Kirsten to his fifty by as many as 75 balls. Only Fraser, helped by one superb stop at cover by Nasser Hussain which emphasised a competent display of groundfielding all round, was able to be truly economical but England generally bowled only in the hope that the batsmen would make their own mistakes, and that was not enough.
The two main spinners had longer stints in the last two sessions before Alec Stewart took the second new ball at 5.30. But it needed a few overs from Mark Ramprakash to underline to both Croft and Giles what they were doing wrong: bowling too fast. Ted Dexter's shrewd observations of Croft's bowling at Lord's were confirmed by his average speed of around 55mph in his first two spells. Ramprakash bowled at under 50mph and three times turned the ball sufficiently to trouble Kirsten.
Moments of hope for England and their supporters were painfully few. When 67 Kirsten, forward to Gough, was lucky perhaps to get the benefit against a ball which pitched in line with the stumps and struck his pad in front, and Gough - again - almost shaved Kallis's off stump when he was 81. Not long after he pulled and forced successive long-hops from Ramprakash to reach a 187-ball hundred which puts his hitherto modest Test record into better perspective.
Day 2: Kirsten's marathon vigil maintains stranglehold
ON such a pitch as this, with a batsman of Gary Kirsten's single-mindedness at the crease and South Africa, one up in the series, cautious by nature, the course of the second day at Old Trafford was always destined to be protracted and one-sided. South Africa finished it with a total of 487 for four, Kirsten with his highest Test score of 210 and England with a weary, uphill struggle ahead of them to keep the series alive, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.
They will look to Michael Atherton in particular today to dig in with some similar resolution when he opens the innings and their chances of saving the game can only have been enhanced by South Africa's peculiar inability to score more than 250 runs in a 90-over day.
From the outset it was a question only of how fast, or how slowly, they would score and how many wickets an impotent England attack would have managed to take.
Hansie Cronje had to decide whether to declare half an hour from the close last night or bat on into the third day in the belief that the more an insipid pitch is played upon, the more likely it is to give some assistance to Allan Donald and Paul Adams in particular. To no-one's real surprise he settled for the safer course.
Having established a 1-0 lead at Lord's, the South Africans are in no mood to allow England back into the series, but their lack of enterprise until Hansie Cronje and Jonty Rhodes injected a little more urgency into the batting in the final session was typical of the approach of a team for whom safety always comes first.
They have had the bowling potency to defeat the strongest side of recent times, Australia, but they have not managed to win a series against them since their return to Test cricket because they do not attack so uncompromisingly in the field, nor make the pace so boldly when the initiative is theirs with the bat.
That is not to say that they cannot win this third Test, but if they declare or are bowled out by lunchtime today, the odds must be that they will run out of time, certainly so if they cannot make England follow on.
On the other hand England will have no chance of winning and time is running out for them too at a juncture when their long run of failures in major Test series is being so heatedly debated.
This was always going to be a difficult season for the game. South Africa are a hard team to beat - Sri Lanka will be no pushovers either when they arrive later in the summer - the weather has been lousy and the World Cup has inevitably dominated all other sporting events. But cricket writing since the Golden Age is littered with the mistaken prophesies of Jeremiahs.
Now, as for the last 11 years, the particular plight of the England team is nothing that would not be corrected at once by a world-class fast bowler and a match-winning wrist spinner. South Africa normally possess two of the first and a useful example of the second. They will miss the injured Shaun Pollock over the next three days' action but Donald is fresh and ready to go and it will be intriguing to see how effective Adams can be on a pitch as slow as this one.
Throughout their cricket history England have seldom produced champion fast bowlers and wrist spinners, as opposed to seamers and finger spinners. The worst thing administrators ever did was to cover pitches for both Test and county cricket, thereby reducing the home advantage once enjoyed by England to almost total insignificance.
The experience gained by overseas players in the county game and the widespread re-laying of pitches has produced surfaces which are hard and true, further underlining the need for hard-wicket specialists.
The return of Ian Salisbury and the maturing of Alex Tudor cannot come soon enough but Jim Laker would certainly not have taken his 19 wickets (before sparse crowds by the way) on a pitch like this one. Deploring his failure to time the ball on it, Kirsten, with marvellous self-deprecation, described his marathon as ``the worst innings I've ever played''.
He said it, however, with a smile. It was an immensely worthy, supremely dedicated, one-paced innings by a batsman of essentially sound technique with an unflappable temperament and immense powers of both concentration and determination.
It was his second double-hundred in successive first-class matches, his seventh hundred in his last 26 Tests - it took him 17 matches to score his first - and the fifth highest South African Test innings. It was also, at 10 hr 53 min, the longest innings in 113 Anglo/South African Test matches and, despite a six and 24 fours, it certainly seemed it.
Apart from the pitch, he was held back by steady bowling and realistic field settings. England were admirably good-humoured all day despite their plight but there could have been more aggression about their approach at the start of the day and again after Darren Gough had produced an outswinger of perfect length to uproot Jacques Kallis's off stump in the ninth over of the morning. Neither Gough nor Dominic Cork, who went on to bowl nine good overs off the reel, hit the ground running.
Kirsten timed the ball marginally better yesterday and scored faster in making a further 112 before Angus Fraser had him caught behind as he cut at a ball just outside his off stump in the 14th over after tea.
It was a rare moment to celebrate for a patient, good-humoured crowd of 17,500. For batting style they were indebted instead to Darryl Cullinan, whose driving, and strokeplay off his legs, was particularly pleasing, but even he took more than three hours to reach his fifty mark after one or two anxious moments against both Gough and Cork in his first 10 minutes at the crease.
Cullinan eventually chopped a cut on to his off stump against Ashley Giles, bowling over the wicket into the rough. In Giles's case it was, despite the fact that it earned him his first Test wicket, a defensive ploy and one which he uses more accurately than most, but it may be a foretaste of an attacking tactic which Adams will use against England: he is unlikely to get much turn except out of the rough.
Where accurate, defensive bowlers were called for, Robert Croft and Fraser were once more Alec Stewart's main supports yesterday, Croft conceding fewer than two runs an over and Fraser comfortably under three. Giles was expensive only in successive overs in mid-afternoon when Kirsten twice went down on one knee to heave him over midwicket and Cullinan left his crease to loft him over his head before hitting a searing cover slash off the front foot. It was a purple patch in a monochrome day.
Day 3: Atherton resists in vain as Adams puts England on the rack again
By Scyld Berry
IT was a grey day which for England became ever blacker. South Africa finally declared at 552 for five wickets, which left England to make 353 simply to save the follow-on. Strange though it may sound, England have not played too badly here after losing a crucial toss: it was at Edgbaston and at Lord's that they missed the boat, for which they are paying here.
Aggravating England's discomfort was the back trouble which afflicted Graham Thorpe, and with it the wider debate of the conflict between county and country. Thorpe was England's best batsman against South Africa in 1994. Yesterday, after suffering back spasms, he could not bat in his normal position at number five, and when he did come in at number eight, he was leg before sixth ball for nought, as darkness of two kinds closed in.
When he first suffered back spasms on the tour of the West Indies firstly during the Barbados Test, then during the one-day internationals - Thorpe was sent home by the England medical team specifically to have a scan. Surrey, on the other hand, decided he did not need one, only for the trouble to flare up and rule Thorpe out of the one-day internationals against South Africa, and again yesterday when England needed him dearly.
Thorpe clearly should have all the medical attention he needs to be ready for the tour of Australia which sets off in late October. There appears little prospect at the moment of England winning this series, and there will be none at all if England lose this third Test. A complete break from cricket for a cricketer who has played summer and winter for the last nine years would also be beneficial, provided Surrey can be persuaded to spare him.
England can therefore call themselves unlucky. Or they can realise that the latest instalment in Thorpe's incapacity is the product of the tension in a system which makes him answer to two masters. It is possible to argue that England would not have been in quite such dire straits yesterday if the main Test players had been contracted to the ECB alone.
In the day's preliminaries South Africa upped a couple of gears to add 65 more runs from 12.5 overs and post their highest total against England. Three of those runs came from misfields, by Dominic Cork and Mark Ramprakash, but over the previous two days England had retreated in tolerably good order. The South African running between wickets was not what it had been at Lord's.
Every morning for three days Darren Gough has taken a wicket; England's problem has been that not many other wickets have fallen in between times. Yesterday's occurred when Jonty Rhodes checked an offdrive in Gough's first over, but soon Hansie Cronje was away and mowing Robert Croft for six. Croft has yet to take a wicket in this series, for which there is all too much of a precedent among England off-spinners, like John Emburey against Pakistan in 1987.
At noon, under high but dreary cloud, Donald marked out his run at the Stretford Road end, from which Gough had found his bounce. He had four slips and a gully, Rhodes at cover and an even faster sprinter, Makhaya Ntini, as utility fielder. Hitherto the bowling in this Test match had been pitch-and-hope; henceforth it was fire and brimstone from the South African fast bowlers, even in Shaun Pollock's absence, while Paul Adams kept going at the Warwick Road end from lunch till tea.
Nick Knight did not survive the hour to lunch. His lefthandedness disrupted Donald's line at first as he fired his bouncers wide of off stump, but in his fourth over Donald detonated one on leg stump, Knight ducked and left his gloves in harm's way.
Atherton showed how it should be done when he lowered his gloves to avoid Klusener's skidding bouncer, only it hit him on the helmet instead and dazed him. Atherton was hit twice on the hands as well, making a catalogue of injuries which had never threatened Gary Kirsten during the longest innings ever played for South Africa.
Before lunch, from the Stretford end, Ntini had his first two Test overs in England, but Cronje likes to start each session with his best bowler, as captains should, so Donald resumed after the break for lunch and, in Atherton's case, for repairs as well. In the first over of this new spell Donald bounced out Hussain on the line of off stump, just as he had been bounced out in Barbados, not lowering his hands and bat as Atherton does.
England creaked at 34 for two, much like Thorpe's back. Another couple of wickets now and the dam wall would have been breached, the water sweeping heaven knows what else away, in addition to England in this match. Not least of England's plights is that there is no candidate to take England to Australia other than Stewart, if Hussain was not considered ready two months ago.
After two days of wicketkeeping, Stewart had one hour out of the action before one of his more important innings. Another unfavourable omen was that his highest Test score at Old Trafford before yesterday was 30. But he and Atherton took some of the strain, and Stewart put away a couple of full tosses straight past Adams to brighten the afternoon, if not to the extent of making the Pennines visible.
Donald clocked just over 90mph at his fastest, Ntini only just under as he sprinted in and so flung himself into his task that he swept himself off both feet in his follow-through. Atherton did not underestimate him. ``He has the heart of a lion,'' England's former captain said after seeing Ntini playing for Border on England's last tour of South Africa. A fine right-handed catch from Mark Boucher was also a significant contribution when Atherton edged a wide and full-length ball.
Stewart lasted until tea but not long after. He thought Jacques Kallis would deliver another outswinger, and it turned out not to be one at all, quite the opposite. So Cork came in at number six, when England's innings was little more than three hours old.
It was in England's favour that the pitch held together better than its rather loose third-day appearance suggested. There was no seam to be had from the bare brown turf, and no swing either except for Kallis. But the ball was turning slowly for Adams as he settled into his bowling from round and over the wicket, and England's fifth wicket fell when Cork inside-edged on to his pad and out to silly point. South Africa had taken as many wickets in four hours as England in three days.
Day 4: Stewart leads the way in England's fight for survival
IT is still a hard row to hoe, but Alec Stewart and Michael Atherton have issued a timely and desperately needed reminder that there is some skill and backbone left in English cricket, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.
Coming together nine overs before lunch yesterday when South Africa had taken four more English wickets, the last two of the sorry first innings and the first two of the second, they finally stopped the rot which spread through the side a fortnight ago at Lord's.
Before bad light stopped play 10 minutes early on a cold and blustery day, when watching demanded both hardiness and devotion from a crowd of about 8,000, Stewart had reached an admirable and commanding first Test hundred against South Africa and Atherton, wonderfully steadfast as always with his back to the wall, was on the way to his second in three Tests.
South Africa took the new ball just before the close and they still have plenty of runs and time with which to play, having forced England to follow on a massive 369 runs behind. That deficit has been reduced to 158, but six hours is a long time to bat, Graham Thorpe remains in considerable pain from a damaged disc and the forecast promises no more than an occasional shower.
Thorpe will bat today if he can move at all, but he faces probable surgery and a delicate decision has to be made about when it should be. He came home early from the West Indies, having first suffered back spasms at the start of his hundred in the Barbados Test, and missed the one-day internationals against South Africa in May.
Surrey have a great chance of their first championship since 1971 and would be sorry, of course, to lose Thorpe but they won without him, not to mention Stewart, Mark Butcher and Ben Hollioake, at the end of last week, and the inclination of the England authorities will be to advise an immediate operation if specialists recommend it. Their priority will be the tour of Australia, though it starts only a month after the end of the season.
The spirit of Eddie Paynter may call Thorpe today but a four-and-a-half-hour partnership of 200 between England's two most experienced batsmen will probably need to be extended at least until lunch if the match is to be saved and new life given to the series. With a leg- spinner in prime form to strengthen the attack at Trent Bridge, hope might then replace the despair felt by all on Saturday as South Africa followed up their huge total by taking eight England wickets for 162, with Donald and Paul Adams to the fore and Makhaya Ntini proving himself to be a much improved performer.
It was Jacques Kallis, having finished the England first innings with a highly dubious lbw, who did the most work yesterday from the Warwick Road End. Partly this was reward for his extraordinary dismissal of Stewart in the first innings when he played no stroke to a ball on his off stump, and partly the result of an ankle injury sustained by Lance Klusener, who could bowl only three overs. Less significantly, Gerry Liebenberg damaged a finger making a brave stop at silly point off a full-blooded drive by Stewart.
South Africa's real problem yesterday, apart from the resolution and skill with which Atherton and Stewart played when they joined forces at 11 for two, was that Adams, whether he bowled from round the wicket or into the rough from over it, only occasionally got much turn or bounce and frequently pitched short.
Neither he nor anyone was assisted much by a pitch which remains bland and slow, though Donald, supreme athlete that he is, has alone been able to make the ball fly and England's plight would no doubt be still more dire had Shaun Pollock been fit to play. South Africa have a chance to regroup after a night's sleep and to unleash the formidably fast and menacing Donald once more with the second new ball and the issue may hang on whether or not he breaks through.
Formidable bouncers earned him the first two England wickets in the first innings after Hansie Cronje's aggressive 69 not out had hastened the declaration and again yesterday he unsettled Nick Knight with searing short balls before, going round the wicket, he found his outside edge. Nasser Hussain followed seven overs later, utterly defeated by a superb ball from Kallis which pitched on the off-stump and straightened to hit it.
The captain's first scoring shot was a sliced drive off Kallis which flew in the air wide of gully for four but there were very few false shots after that and both his timing and his judgment were near perfect. That his second fifty was slower than his first was the result of a change of tactics by Cronje in the face of a volley of boundaries by both batsmen after lunch. Refusing to be bullied, Atherton and Stewart both hooked Donald for four and once the ball became softer and the short ball therefore less threatening, a lapse of concentration became the main danger. The cold wind allowed little or no movement through the air.
The key to a heartening partnership, for all Stewart's 14 fours on the way to his 11th Test hundred, was Atherton's ability to hang on against Donald in the early overs when the flak was flying. He had been hit on the head by a Klusener bouncer in the first innings and there were more blows to the hands yesterday but pluck is his defining quality.
Between them the new captain and the old have kept the wolves at bay. It was crucial that they should do so after the gloomy depths of Saturday when the chairman of selectors was acknowledging public dismay - or, worse, apathy - and familiar calls were being made for wholesale changes to the team and the structure of county cricket. Further adjustments will be necessary to both but decisions have to be made rationally and it would greatly assist the process if South Africa could be denied a victory today.
Day 5: England show steel to keep series alive and kicking
CRICKET'S capacity to surprise and excite is infinite. A game which began dully, in deep gloom and amid much talk of a dying game in need of desperate remedies, developed into a wonderful, heart-stopping finish, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.
It took place in bright sunshine before a crowd shifting agonisingly in their seats as they willed Angus Fraser, England's last man, to survive the final over from South Africa's magnificent fast bowler, Allan Donald.
[INLINE] If Fraser could last six balls, England would save the game. If Donald, with six wickets in the bag on a dead pitch, could get him out, South Africa would be left a single run to win the match and take an unpassable 2-0 lead in the series.
The first, a searing bouncer, lobbed off Fraser's arm guard as he fended sightlessly away. The third ball was jabbed down into the ground and stopped from rebounding on to the stumps only by staunch old Angus's size-12 boot. The last delivery, a yorker, thudded into his pads and Donald, as fierce a competitor as the game has ever known, roared out an appeal. Doug Cowie, the umpire from New Zealand, stood motionless as he coolly weighed up the line. Time ceased for an instant before his quiet ``not out''.
It would just have missed the leg stump: such a thin line between South African triumph and English relief; such a vast difference between the defeat which would have exaggerated the changes required to the England side and the structure which produces and supports them, and the draw which keeps the series alive and made heroes of Alec Stewart, Michael Atherton, Mark Ramprakash and, especially in the final phase, Robert Croft.
Nervous and uncertain at first, he was in calm control by the end, having batted for three hours and 10 minutes after coming in with England still 73 behind, only four wickets left and 51 overs still to be bowled. His performance may not save his place for the Trent Bridge Test, because England have to pick Ian Salisbury to add more venom to the spin department and on unhelpful pitches Croft has not yet taken a wicket in the series. But his spirited effort must keep him in the frame.
It is because the selectors have resisted wild changes that there was sufficient esprit de corps for England to hang on through the last day and, in all, for 171 overs, despite being thoroughly outplayed for the first three days. South Africa, having come so close through the unstinting efforts of Donald, Jacques Kallis and Paul Adams, had good reason to feel robbed, but they will be less disconsolate than they were when Atherton led the resistance in Johannesburg two-and-a-half years ago because they dominated this game even without Shaun Pollock. They are still one up in the series and they have a mid-tour respite before the serious stuff starts again two weeks on Thursday.
Hansie Cronje felt that it was Stewart and Atherton's partnership which had done most to save the game. For 56 more minutes yesterday morning, in still, warmer weather, they kept Donald and Kallis at bay with the new ball. So slow was the pitch that both bowled frequent short balls, knowing that edges to the slips were unlikely. All day, Cronje decided against an excess of close fielders, preferring to try to eliminate the possibility of South Africa having to make runs against the clock in a fourth innings.
The third-wicket stand had reached 226 before Atherton mishooked Kallis to give Makhaya Ntini a 21st birthday present in the form of a well-judged catch at long leg, an unlikely end, in a way, to an innings of six-and-a-quarter hours by Atherton. Ramprakash settled firmly into the place he had left behind as Stewart pressed on beyond 150, warmly cheered by the crowd for every handsome stroke he played. He had hit 24 fours and batted for more than seven hours when he, too, fell to a hook, fetched to deep square leg from outside his off stump.
Within four overs, England went from 293 for four to 296 for six as Graham Thorpe, limping out with a runner, was beaten by a shrewdly delivered swinging yorker and Dominic Cork, correctly forward to Adams, watched the ball spin back on to his stumps off the angled face of his bat.
The Ramprakash-Croft alliance held the fort until tea, not without alarms in Croft's case, but odds of 10-1 against the draw were being offered when in the first over after tea, Donald brought a ball sharply back off the seam to claim Ramprakash leg-before. The ball probably struck the pad just outside the off stump, a matter there was hardly time to consider before Ashley Giles tried to withdraw his bat and steered a catch low into the huge hands of Brian McMillan, fielding substitute at first slip.
There was ample time still for South Africa but Darren Gough, not without an occasional moment of madness, settled in with a broad bat to help Croft to the new ball, taken with 13 overs left and England just 15 runs behind. That had become only seven overs remaining and two runs behind when Donald finally blasted out Gough with a catch to short leg but somehow Croft and Fraser survived, the big man blocking and fending, his partner gaining sweet reward for determined work on his batting since Glenn McGrath humiliated him last year.
``I'd much rather be one down with two to play than two down,'' said Stewart at the end. ``Well done the boys in the second innings, and let's hope we can do it in the first next time.''
Exactly so. The series is alive and hope with it. Once more the great game has bolstered our faith.