The grandmaster at work: Cummins' rapid chess and calculated chaos
With six different bowlers operating in six consecutive overs and a flurry of field changes, the Australian captain kept South Africa guessing in a fascinating tactical battle at Newlands
Pat Cummins was playing a game of chess. For some periods, at Newlands in the final session of Day 3, it felt like rapid chess. He wasn’t simply manoeuvring his pieces around on the board though. He was shuffling them. He was jumbling them together. He was displacing them. He was relocating them. Most moves carefully thought out. Also, many of them made on the fly but with the air of them being carefully thought out. That was the plan. This wasn’t simply a game that Cummins was playing with his key pieces on the field. He was trying to play them in the minds of his opposition.
He wasn’t only ringing the changes to the field. He was making them happen everywhere. Almost like he was making the flat pitch in the middle of Newlands seem a lot less stable by utilising a revolving door with regards to the way he was using his bowlers. At one point, he took it to a new level with six consecutive overs being bowled by six different bowlers.
Nathan Lyon out, Mitchell Starc in. Pat Cummins out, Cooper Connolly in. Starc out, Renshaw in. Connolly out, Starc in. Renshaw out, Connolly in.
It was manic. But never chaotic. There seemed to be a rationale behind each change. And it served its purpose of keeping the South Africans guessing. Including their best batter of the match, Marques Ackerman, who’d continued on from where he’d left off the first innings and overcome some testing spells from Cummins and Lyon. Then along came Starc, the fifth change in the sequence, to deliver the killer blow with a ripsnorter that had the diminutive left-hander fending helplessly behind the wicket. The big breakthrough that broke the back of South Africa’s second innings. Probably it was the near-unplayable delivery from Starc that deserves most credit for Ackerman’s downfall. But you couldn’t deny the role that Cummins’ moving pieces had played in knocking the opener off his well-set rhythm.
The Australian captain made 12 bowling changes in all during a phase of 34 overs in the third session of play. He must have made nearly 120 fielding changes though in that time. Maybe more. He must have also had nearly 150 conversations with his bowlers. Between nearly every delivery, at times to shift a catching fielder a couple of inches to his right or push the boundary rider five steps towards the boundary or from it. He was being both a grandmaster and a music conductor.
Most importantly he was enjoying it. And he had the perfect weapons or chessmen at his disposal to deploy as part of his ‘keep them guessing’ gameplan. If he wasn’t hitting them hard with his two rooks in Starc and Hazlewood, armed with some late reverse-swing. He was turning to his knight in the shape of Lyon. While he wasn’t doing the hopping and skipping, the most successful finger spinner in Test history was surely getting the ball to do so on a dusty Newlands surface that was beginning to show signs of deterioration.
And it was an evening where Lyon reminded everyone that he’s still got it. His spells after the tea break were a masterclass on guile, drift, dip and patience. There were numerous deliveries that beat the batters on the inside part of their bats. But repeatedly off the same area on the pitch, he was getting deliveries to straighten, keeping the South Africans on tenterhooks, even as the fielders around them continued to play musical chairs. Cummins and Lyon consulted with each other at least thrice during every over.
Lyon’s constant interrogation meant that Bavuma was made to look like a shadow of the batter who so confidently stroked 179 only a week ago in Gqeberha. He nudged and prodded and poked and nurdled but barely looked comfortable enough to shift any pressure back on the off-spinner, who’d already got him out twice in the series. What didn’t help the South African captain was the lack of confidence he was deriving from his partner at the other end as Matthew Breetzke hung on even more grimly than his senior partner. How Breetzke managed to survive a couple of Lyon spells was as much a curiosity as some of the behaviour from some of the patrons around Newlands as we got into the final quarter of play on a sunny Thursday.
The Australian captain was presenting his own challenges the times he was running with the ball himself in between marshalling his troops. Even though this is the longest he’s gone without a Test wicket in terms of balls, there were plenty of times he came very close to breaking this strange drought. He could have had Bavuma trapped in front if not for a generous DRS projection. And his short-pitched deliveries proved a constant threat to Bavuma and his colleagues. He even caught an outside-edge on one occasion but the ball refused to go all the way to Renshaw in the cordon.
Cummins had one final move left up his sleeve though. He gave Lyon a break, the 11th change of the session, to bring Renshaw on for one over from the Wynberg End, before returning to his mainstay to close out the day.
From this point on, it was all Lyon. He started with a testing over to Bavuma, forcing him to make some late and vital decisions around his crease. A couple of deliveries bounced off the rough and had the right-hander in a spot of bother. His next over, the penultimate of the day, with five minutes left on the clock, Lyon shifted to around the wicket for two deliveries halfway through the over. The switch and bait. Getting Bavuma to think about other areas of the pitch except the rough, before jumping right back to his more natural angle of delivery. It also led to Cummins playing his final offensive move on the board for the evening: in came silly point.
Bavuma had endured 114 deliveries of this inquisition. Maybe it was fatigue. Maybe it was his brain having been discombobulated by the relentless need to make his best decisions at the crease. And the presence of the close-in fielder on the off side. For, he ended up getting tempted by a loopy delivery from Lyon just outside his off-stump. In his bid to potentially get rid of at least one of the close-in catchers, the otherwise unflustered Bavuma ended up attempting an audacious hoick through the on-side, allowing the ball to drop on him and then turn through his defences onto the stumps. Checkmate.
But the job isn’t done yet. South Africa still have six more of their own pieces on the board and Cummins will be back employing his grandmastery to set the series up for his team as this fascinating duel between the two best Test teams in the world reaches its promised grandstand finish.
