Chaos meets narrative at St George's Park
An eventful Day 4 in Gqeberha saw South Africa steal a march, but more drama is in store on the final day
A shadow blinked across the bails atop Marnus Labuschagne’s stumps in the neon sunshine that seemed to blaze in every nook and cranny of St George’s Park after lunch on Wednesday. The edges of the blip of black were sharp, indicating the breathless proximity of what had caused it.
It was the ball.
Kagiso Rabada had bowled it from the Park Drive End. Labuschagne had left it. Somehow the delivery did not bowl him.
Rabada steamed towards Labuschagne again from the Duckpond End before Tea. Somewhere between Rabada’s delivery stride and Labuschagne’s leave — this time there was plenty of daylight between ball and anything else — Ryan Rickelton’s cap was plucked off his head by the wind. He kept his eye on the ball nonetheless and gloved it neatly even as Aiden Markram set off to do the fielding of Rickelton’s runaway headgear.
The trees along the eastern boundary, abutting Park Drive, were alive with kinetic energy brought by what was now way beyond a breeze. It was the batting wind. Or the westerly from the hinterland that whips across the ground diagonally, denying the bowlers the help of the moisture the easterly brings from the Indian Ocean.
Moments earlier a member of the staff’s two-way radio had crackled into life in the pressbox catering area: “Those gale-force winds that have been predicted are starting now. Be vigilant.”
The pressbox roof at times made the kind of sound the Titanic might have when it broke apart before sinking into the north Atlantic Ocean. Flags clung to their poles for dear life.
Imagine bowling in that. Marco Jansen did, and told a press conference: “You can train as much as you want but if the wind is going like it went this afternoon it’s tricky to find your rhythm. Because one second it’s on your back and the next one it swirls and hits you in the face.”
At Tea came reports of spectators in the Duckpond Pavilion wrapped up in gloves, beanies and thermal underwear. But it stayed hot as hell in the middle, where an extraordinary Test approached its sharp end.
Consider that South Africa were 12/2 after Sunday’s first day was limited by rain to 74 deliveries, and crashed to 97/5 in the 42.4 overs bowled on Monday. And that they were 110/6 before two century stands — Temba Bavuma the fulcrum, Jansen and Simon Harmer the levers — took them to a declaration of 425/9. Jansen’s 100-ball 85, almost two-third of them hammered in fours and sixes, was the jolt forward his team needed.
Then they bowled Australia out for 99 in 42.3 overs with Jansen all but unhittable for his 5/33. They did that without Anrich Nortjé, who left the field in the middle of his fourth over — the 20th of the innings — with a groin injury.
Despite that South Africa told Australia to follow on. That hasn’t happened to them since they played India at the SCG in January 2019, when a draw ensued.
Consider also that Labuschagne was dismissed twice on Wednesday, five hours and 46 minutes apart. First Harmer, in the gully, flung out his dinner-plate sized left hand to snare a catch off Nortjé. Later Harmer induced an ill-advised charge that yielded a hoist into the wind and towards long-on. The ball reached its apex and seemed to hang there like the star of The Red Balloon.
Jansen swirled, circled and slid to take the catch without dislodging his hat nor the sunglasses snug on the back of it. He came up holding the ball in the same hand he used to keep his floppy in place. It was hard to decide whether the gesture was classy or demeaning.
By then Jansen and Labuschagne, both Klerksdorp kids, had indulged in a spirited but civilised verbal tussle. Some of it was conducted in Afrikaans, which would have been gibberish to Steven Smith during his stand of 23 with Labuschagne — the biggest of Australia’s dismal first innings.
Then again, some of what Smith and Labuschagne get up to in their curious comedy double act in the middle was lost on Jansen.
“Their nuances and how they do things can get under your skin,” he said. “It’s a fun way of playing a game within a game. Sometimes it’s funny when they bat together — they’re like, ‘Wait! No! Oh! Sorry! No! Maybe! Yeah!’.
“It’s about keeping your head in the game. That’s tricky and you can get distracted. But Marnus is a fierce competitor and you have to be at your best to firstly restrict him and then in trying to get him out.”
There was no animosity, Jansen said, in his conversation with Labuschagne: “That’s was just us having fun in PE.” Or in Port Elizabeth, which is what Gqeberha was called previously.
Labuschagne’s second dismissal in the name-changing city on Wednesday ended a stand of 92 with Travis Head. Did it also end Labuschagne’s Test career? He has now gone 14 completed innings without reaching 50, too many of them ended by his own errors.
Head did Travis Head things for more than three-and-a-half hours and 138 balls and was 87 not out at stumps, which Australia reached with six wickets standing and needing 170 more runs to make South Africa bat again.
Australia lost 13 wickets on Wednesday. Only once — against England at the SCG in February 1955 — have more of their wickets tumbled in a single day’s play; one more.
It was a day of high drama. Matt Renshaw and Beau Webster joined Labuschagne in the Doubly Dismissed in a Day Club. Nightwatch Scott Boland, who was two not out at the close on Tuesday, was also two not out at the close on Wednesday. But Australia still have Steven Smith up their sleeves — he has yet to bat because of a neck problem.
You want narrative? We’ve got narrative. Too much; a glut. So we’re throwing it all at you in no particular order of relevance to avoid the stuff flooding the zone.
Because there comes a point in matches like this where sanity is hit out of the park and never returns. When the cricket stops making sense and we await the next seismic shock. How do players keep their heads with all that going on?
“You can get yourself in trouble if you think too far ahead of the game,” Jansen said. “We did well to focus on what we can do or what we were trying to do in whatever moment. As soon as you get too far ahead of yourself your mind’s not where it should be. You think of how things might play out, but you can only do what you can do with this ball and the next ball and the next ball.”
Jansen admitted to not always getting that right: “Sometimes I’m cuckoo in the head. I sit late at night and think of how I want to play, and how I want to be as a cricketer. They’re deep, hard questions. But I just want to be a player the team can lean on, especially in tough moments.
“It’s not always going to work out the way. But those are the types of things I ask myself — if I can contribute 1% to the team winning then I am more than a happy player.”
Because, as Jansen understood it, “Test cricket is all about resilience coupled with consistency. It’s easy to let the game leak. It’s about trying to do the right thing for as long as possible.”
If all you knew about Test cricket came from watching this match, you would scoff at such cool, calm logic. You would think, with plenty of justification, that Test cricket was about chaos. More will surely follow on Thursday.
