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A week or so ago India won their Test against England with the biggest second innings run chase ever on the sub-continent. Now, on Sunday, South Africa have scored 414 to win the first Test against Australia at Perth, the highest winning second innings run chase ever recorded in Australia.
Where have all the bowlers gone?
In the case of Australia, only four wickets were captured in South Africa’s second innings, and Mitchell Johnson achieved the remarkable feat of taking 11 of the 14 South African wickets lost in the Test.
On the last day of the Perth Test there were three significant moments where the match could have been won by the bowling side. At the start of play South Africa were 3 for 281 with a new ball due in an hour or so of play. Wickets lost then would have exposed the frail South African tail to Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson (the destroyer in the first innings) withe the new ball. All over for South Africa, you’d think.
The next significant moment came when the new ball was taken with the score at 4 for 361. Ricky Ponting gave Brett Lee, at this critical juncture in the Test when wickets were needed, one slip only.
Then with the score at 4 for 388, with his bowlers having the chance to rest up at the lunch break, Ponting brought back Johnson for one last assault, a cricketing equivalent of Napoleon sending his Old Guard on one final assault at Waterloo.
While all this was going on Ponting was forced to rely on Peter Siddle earlier in the day and on Jason Krejza to try and fill in when his strike bowlers were being rested. The problem with this is that neither Siddle or Krejza is up to Test standard at this time.
Siddle does nothing with the ball, although he is a whole-hearted trier. How he gets selected ahead of, say, Ben Hilfenhaus remains a mystery of the selection process.
Krejza conceded 5 runs an over in his bowling stint in the second inning, a rate that is unforgivable in a finger-spinner. Watching Krejza being sliced with the death of a thousand cuts, bleeding runs virtually every ball, my mind went back to the great off-spinners of the past, men like Hugh Tayfield who once bowled 137 consecutive balls in a Test in England and did not concede a run.
The selectors’ problem with Krejza is that he looks like the best of a mediocre bunch of spinners. Why play him? Why not play someone like Nathan Bracken to bowl rather in the manner of Derek Underwood, with catchers around the bat applying pressure on the batsmen.
For one of the features of the two run chases was the easy pickings allowed to the batsmen by Pietersen and Ponting, with defensive fields that virtually conceded a single to the batsmen whenever he got the ball into the covers or the mid-leg areas of the field. A.B. de Villers, for instance, got a third of his runs in singles.
Two other points: J.P.Dauminy, a small, neat and aggressive left-hander playing his first Test reminded me of the great Neil Harvey in his willingness to come down the pitch to the bowlers and to smack them fiercely down the ground when they over-pitched. Where is the Australian equivalent to Harvey?
Finally, a couple of years ago Cricket Australia rather abruptly told Denis Lillee his services as a fast bowling coach and mentor were no longer needed. Lillee now spends a lot of time in India successfully encouraging the development of fast bowlers there.
Given the poor display by the Australian fast bowlers at Perth (of all places!), is it too much to expect that the generally incompetent Cricket Australia will make Lillee an offer he can’t refuse to bring on the next crop of Test-winning fast bowlers?
Given Cricket Australia’s past arrogance, we shouldn’t be holding our breathe for the right thing to be done.
Highest successful fourth-innings run chases — all countries, all grounds
7-418 West Indies v Australia, St John’s 2002-03
4-414 South Africa v Australia, Perth 2008-09
4-406 India v West Indies, Port of Spain 1975-76
3-404 Australia v England, Leeds 1948
4-387 India v England, Chennai 2008-09
6-369 Australia v Pakistan, Hobart 1999-2000
7-362 Australia v West Indies, Georgetown 1977-78
9-352 Sri Lanka v South Africa, Colombo 2006
5-348 West Indies v New Zealand, Auckland 1968-69
1-344 West Indies v England, Lord’s 1984
8-342 Australia v India, Perth 1977-78
5-340 South Africa v Australia, Durban 2001-02
5-336 Australia v South Africa, Durban 1949-50
6-334 Australia v South Africa, Cape Town 2001-02
7-332 England v Australia, Melbourne 1928-29
5-326 Sri Lanka v Zimbabwe, Colombo 1997-98
Series results in Tests between Australia and South Africa since South Africa’s re-admission to Test cricket in 1992.
1993-94 in Australia — Played 3: Aus 1, SA 1, drawn 1
1993-94 in South Africa — Played 3: Aus 1, SA 1, drawn 1
1996-97 in South Africa — Played 3: Aus 2, SA 1
1997-98 in Australia — Played 3: Aus 1, drawn 2
2001-02 in Australia — Played 3: Aus 3
2001-02 in South Africa — Played 3: Aus 2, SA 1
2005-06 in Australia — Played 3: Aus 2, drawn 1
2005-06 in South Africa — Played 3: Aus 3
2008-09 in Australia* — Played 1: SA 1
* denotes series still being played.