Proteas secure huge win as mission to restore pride begins
In a display to warm the hearts of cricketing aficionados in many parts of the world, a brave South African team has recorded an emphatic six wicket win over world champion Australia in the opening game of the three match Challenge Series in Durban today. With Gary Kirsten, Jacques Kallis, Mark Boucher and Makhaya Ntini all producing sterling individual efforts under immense personal and collective pressure, the Proteas were on top for most of the battle and their success - attained with twelve balls to spare - was eminently deserved.
For all of the potential symbolism of the triumph, though, it has to be said that the shattering effect of events earlier in the week ensured that it was still not necessarily the greatest of days for South African cricket or for the sport in general. At face value, the first meeting between the world's two most powerful contemporary cricketing nations since the two classic World Cup matches that they contested in the space of five days last June represented a mouth watering prospect. In short, this should have been a great occasion. It should have drawn a capacity crowd to the Kingsmead stadium. Up until a week ago, it was being billed as a day for followers of cricket to savour with relish. At the end of a turbulent week in which the locals' captain had been suspended from duty, however, none of these expectations rang true.
Whilst the win should afford them significant self and collective belief, probably the last thing that South Africa's cricketers genuinely needed to be doing was playing another one-day international match so soon. It was a very professional exhibition in trying circumstances but it was doubtless one that they would have preferred to postpone to a time at which the glare of the international spotlight was not so heavily trained upon them. Competing against the all-conquering Australia is bad enough, but juggling that daunting assignment with the task of attempting to survive a moment of unprecedented crisis might well be as arduous as it ever comes.
Happily, the Proteas did manage to maintain their composure and their nerve well enough to comprehensively outplay their rivals for the majority of this clash. In fact, wicketkeeper (and new vice captain) Boucher and lionhearted young paceman Ntini (4/56) performed with sufficient distinction to ensure that their team had wrested a very clear advantage by as early as the twenty-seventh over of proceedings. It was by that time that the normally indestructible Australian batting line-up had been reduced to the perilous mark of 7/120; Boucher's collection of five catches, Ntini's alarming pace, and a succession of loose shots all combining to rapidly destabilise the tourists.
Around a typically belligerent innings from Australian opener Adam Gilchrist (51), the South Africans opened the match with all the look of a team fiercely determined to put their much publicised trauma behind them. In the twinkling of an eye, Mark Waugh (0) and Matthew Hayden (0) were back in the pavilion, and further successes came the way of both Boucher and Ntini on a regular basis once Gilchrist's innings had been ended by a brilliant catch from the former as he leapt hard and high to his left. Michael Bevan (31), Steve Waugh (2), Andrew Symonds (20) and Shane Warne (0) were all unable to resist the deadly South African combination. There was a certain irony, of course, in the fact that both Mark Waugh and Warne, men whose histories are marked by their own unfortunate brush with an Indian bookmaker, were dismissed without contributing so much as a run between them and it was not lost on a crowd basking both in the rapid fall of wickets and the warm conditions.
Things began to unravel for a period thereafter as a freewheeling Damien Martyn (74) joined with tailenders Damien Fleming (29) and Brett Lee (24*) to initiate a magnificent late recovery that lifted the Australians to the very respectable score of 9/240 in the finish. The possibility of an unpleasant outcome to the match for the home team was also afforded more life by the early departures of Herschelle Gibbs (out for 0 after a particularly troubling week for him individually) and Neil McKenzie (14). That, however, was as close as Australia came.
Seasoned campaigners Kirsten (97) and Kallis (61) set themselves at the very heart of the victory as they determinedly summoned all of their experience and skill to muster a partnership of 129 runs for the third wicket. Against an attack which illustrated a persistent tendency to err on the side of affording the batsmen too much width outside the line of off stump, both batted beautifully. Kirsten acted as the foil for a free flowing Kallis initially before they reversed roles and took the game out of the Australians' reach with equivalent aplomb. Before he was finally removed in the forty-sixth over, Kirsten accumulated many of his runs by working the ball through and behind point and by hitting in a straighter direction through the leg side. He waited on the bowling intelligently and not only forced many readjustments in the line and length of the seven bowlers who were aligned against him but also continual rearrangements of the field settings and the complexion of the attack. Kallis, at the other end, generated many powerfully timed strokes and the use of his feet and his choice of shots provided a lesson in controlled one-day batting. Shortly after replacing McKenzie, he played three thrilling blows in quick succession (two glorious back foot cover drives off Lee and then a slightly straighter front foot drive off Fleming over the extra cover fence) to announce his arrival at the crease and his concentration and sophistication rarely diminished from there. That their twin efforts laid a platform for Jonty Rhodes (46*) to then indulge himself in unleashing several mighty pulls and cuts was also important in the sense that it paved the way for precisely the kind of frustration-releasing finish that every South African cricketing follower craved in this hour of dire need.
In short, today's events will ultimately probably come to represent an important first step in the healing process for South African cricket. It was the kind of win that its players frequently produced under the inspirational leadership of their fallen captain Hansie Cronje, and that they proved to themselves and everyone else that they were able to conceive exactly the same type of result in his absence will undoubtedly represent a major psychological boost. What is more troubling though is the likelihood that this process of cleansing will not be completed in any sort of hurry at all. In these bleak and murky times, it will indeed take far more than this one isolated result to ensure that the fortunes of cricket in this country are truly reversed.
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