Daylight at last between South Africa and Australia
Rabada set the tone with a devastating opening burst before Harmer ran through the lower order, completing a memorable series win for the hosts
Three balls of the morning session remained at Newlands on Friday when Wiaan Mulder backed away from the stumps with Mitchell Starc well into his magnificent impression of a swan swooping towards the bowling crease.
Starc slowed, stopped, turned around, went back to his mark, and started off again. Again Mulder held up a hand and retreated, this time because Starc’s towel had escaped his waistband and landed on his run-up, clearly in the batter’s eyeline.
Starc went back from whence he had come, but as he passed the stumps he paused to switch the bails. Just for laughs.
Ryan Rickelton, the non-striker, was having none of that. Once Starc was safely in the outfield, his back turned to the stumps, Rickelton returned the bails to their original position.
That he did so without removing a batting glove was impressive in its own small way. Because, when you’re wearing batting gloves, just about all your hands are able to do is hold a bat. Almost everything else is like trying to get a carrot into a keyhole.
For the first 14 days of this gripping series that kind of detail was seized on in an effort to put a sliver of daylight between the teams. Because there is so vanishingly little to separate them. Skilled, resourceful batters? Quality quicks? Canny spinners? Bristling fielding? Feistiness? Both sides tick all of those boxes.
Thus it jarred when Australia won by 214 runs at Kingsmead and South Africa by an innings and 31 runs at St George’s Park. Were these teams really that good? Yes. They needed to be to emerge from complex situations to earn victories, nevermind by those margins. These teams really were that good, hence them being beaten so emphatically was shocking.
Saturday, the 15th day of the series, was also shocking. But not in the same sense. Kagiso Rabada strangled Matt Renshaw and trapped Marnus Labuschagne, who offered no stroke, in front in the first over of Australia’s search of 288 to win. In the seventh Rabada completed his domination of the top order by inducing a wild drive from Travis Head that took the edge and flew to gully, where Marco Jansen took the catch to reduce the Aussies to 22/3.
Good players take advantage of favourable situations to bend the game in their favour. Great players create those situations. Rabada showed, not for the first time, that he is among the latter. And he was duly rewarded — Head was his 350th Test wicket, and he took it with his 13,808th delivery. That is comfortably the fastest in the history of the game by any bowler from any country. Dale Steyn, who is next on the list, needed 911 more balls to reach the milestone.
Australia shambled to 60/7 at lunch, losing Cameron Green to a runout and Alex Carey, Cooper Connolly and Starc in the last 37 deliveries of the session. The last three tumbled to Simon Harmer, who bowled with urgent aggression and found zagging turn to claim those wickets in 29 deliveries without conceding a single run.
Harmer’s startling economy was partly of his own making, but also due to the Aussies’ lack of attacking sensibility. Green shared stands of 17 off 36, 18 off 51, two off 11 and 18 off 50. Many runs were refused, and that was even before Pat Cummins took guard. Rabada has dismissed Australia’s captain seven times in 10 Tests, and so the plan was to protect Cummins from South Africa’s ace.
Green and Cummins had amassed a painstaking two off 73 balls when Temba Bavuma found a novel way to put an end to the silliness. Harmer bowled all of his 13 overs from the Wynberg End. For his 14th he was switched to the Kelvin Grove End to train his sights on Green — who lurched down the pitch to the first delivery and was bowled through the gate.
At 62/8 less than an hour after lunch Australia were on their way to the abattoir. Then they went into hibernation. Cummins and Nathan Lyon had eked out 45 off 104 when tea loomed. Along with Harmer. Cummins played for turn. There wasn’t any, and he was hit on just enough of his back thigh to be leg-before.
Tea was promptly postponed. A good thing too. Ten deliveries later — six of them bowled by Aiden Markram — Harmer fizzed one past Josh Hazlewood’s bat and through the top of his off-stump.
With that the tall, blond spinner roared into the outfield like a lighthouse ablaze and on the hoof with his teammates in giddy pursuit. And why not. Harmer’s career-best 6/16, and the 4/104 he claimed in the first innings, gave him his first 10-wicket haul in Tests.
That sealed South Africa’s 176-run win and the 2-1 series triumph that took them to the top of the world rankings and to second place in the WTC standings.
A crowd of 9,729 stood and applauded. One of them, a boy of maybe 10 in a cap, t-shirt and shorts, leapt the boundary fence, sped to the middle, snatched a stump, and raced all the way back. He tossed his prize into the crowd, but was not able to complete his heist; he was collared by security staff, who handled him with undue roughness and carried him away.
That was ugly. But not this — as South Africa’s players embarked on a lap around the ground to thank the fans, another child sat on a seat and wore a cardboard cutout mask on his face. In 2018 South Africa supporters wore masks fashioned from photographs of the face of Candice Warner, David Warner’s wife, in a cowardly and disgusting attempt to enrage the player.
That kid at Newlands on Saturday lifted his mask and beamed the biggest smile at the world. Then he lowered his mask onto his face again. Suddenly a cardboard cutout of Temba Bavuma’s face was smiling at the world. That’s what progress looks like.
