It was the look of the pitch which encouraged Alec Stewart to bowl first, a move which is bound to attract criticism but which was made for well-considered reasons. The pitch was evenly covered with a decent growth of grass - live, green-tinged grass that appeared to have juice in it. Stewart would have expected the ball to dart about off the seam and because of that he thought it wiser to bowl yesterday than today, when the tinge may have dried to brown and the seam movement diminished. Unkindly, someone said that his choice was made because he was worried about batting against Donald and Pollock. Baloney. His decision was made from his team's perspective and possibilities.
The England captain did not ask South Africa to bat because he necessarily thought he would skittle them cheaply but because he wanted both his faster bowlers and his batsmen to operate when the pitch most suited them. After all, we are told that Darren Gough, Dominic Cork and Angus Fraser are the dream seam team.
Dream on. The ball did next to nothing during the morning - thankfully Gough bowled to his potential and he is less dependent on the seam for his threat - not until that is, a 20-year-old part-timer with a dodgy back making his surprise first appearance woke everyone up.
Andrew Flintoff did something very important with the ball. He hit the pitch. Because it is a slower surface than expected the batsmen had time to adjust to any movement or simply to wait for the ball and trust the gentle bounce. Flintoff, who is anything but gentle, hurried it through and immediately found Daryll Cullinan's outside edge and Jacques Kallis's inside edge to disturb their rhythm. If this lad sorts his back out he'll be slippery, make no mistake.
Anyway, up until then England had settled for meanness as their method, Gough again excepted, and for a time Cork and Fraser only ``put it there'' as cricketers say, rather than ran in to give it everything.
``Put it in, you get it out'', cricketers also say, and in his two overs before tea and plenty after Angus Fraser ran in with his usual real purpose, rocking back in his delivery and following through halfway to the batsmen, who were suddenly hurried. Stewart began to take the ball at waist height and above instead of by his shins and so England briefly had some control and some opportunity.
The duller the pitch the harder the bowler must work. This was a blood-and-sweat bowling day of shortish spells and maximum effort. No easy balls, no heads down after boundaries, just roll up those sleeves, get stuck in and make certain the opposition know they are in a contest.
In patches England achieved this, Gough mainly, Fraser latterly. During other times they looked short of the highest class, which is why South Africa scored so freely. Because of it Stewart will have a touch of egg on his face this morning, which he does not deserve. It takes two to tango, the captain and the whole of his team.