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What a game. What a series. Australia rose from the dead, Test cricket crankily muttered that it had been alive all along, and a New Hope was born. Just don’t be premature in hailing young Patrick Cummins as the Messiah.
The eighteen-year-old was Man of the Match on his Test debut, in a performance that not just he will find unforgettable.
Let’s just hope, however vainly, that he’ll be spared such pressure of expectation as would hinder a repeat performance.
His first-innings efforts were not the stuff of legend: 1/38 with the ball and two runs with the bat, though his bowling was comfortably the most economical, and his victim the world’s most in-form batsman in Hashim Amla.
Second time round though, Cummins’ first-innings threat abruptly materialised, with 6/79 in South Africa’s collapse. From an imposing 3/237, they lost 7/102 to set Australia 309 to win.
Then in the chase, as Australia’s position slipped from strong to fair to consumptive, he calmly scored 13 of an 18-run partnership with Mitchell Johnson to take the team home, with only a white-faced and praying Nathan Lyon in reserve as what could loosely be described as a batsman.
It has been a compelling pair of Test matches that sorely need a decider. Those series shortened to accommodate Mickey Mouse are an insult even to Disney. In the administrative mind, sentiment wars with pragmatism. Let’s hope the officials remember that the brain can only worry about the wallet as long as a well-tended heart keeps beating.
The collapse has been the mode du jour, but has not robbed us of entertainment. The thrust and parry at Newlands was like a Jenga tower fighting a failed soufflé, as the second and third innings failed to reach three figures on a decent deck.
But the head-shaking novelty value was high, as part of all four innings were played out on the same day. The next, a masterful chase was glued together by Amla.
In Johannesburg, South Africa rode several half centuries to 4/241, then collapsed with such force that the innings almost went into rewind. They settled at 266. Australia were 0/174 before crashing to 296, a mere 30-run lead.
Then the aforementioned South African collapse, a record Johannesburg chase of 309 required to win, and it was left to Australia this time to construct the one innings of the match with slightly more structural resilience than a wedge of sun-warmed Brie.
The surest way to coax a good performance from a player is to bag them in a column they will never read. My tactic worked brilliantly, with recent targets in Ricky Ponting, Brad Haddin, and Mitchell Johnson all deciding to help win a Test match.
Johnson, in fact, was crucial in both innings. His first dig of 38 not out took Australia from 33 behind to 30 in front. His undefeated 40 in the second was the key to Australia’s win, combining with Haddin for a 72-run partnership before coaxing Siddle and Cummins home.
Haddin’s 55 in tense and trying circumstances added to Ponting’s 62, and fourth-gamer Usman Khawaja’s 65, his first milestone after a promising beginning.
When the thrill of the win subsides, we must still note that no-one delivered the command performance required to lay speculation to rest. Ponting’s in-between score will lead to more indecision, like a neutrino that can’t quite decide if it’s faster than the speed of light.
As with Steve Waugh’s late career, you know it’s a sign when you feel nervous on behalf of a great batsman as he approaches the crease. It’s another sign when you praise a batsman for doing what a batsman is supposed to do.
An earlier Ponting would not just have chased down this total, but collared it, roughed it up a bit, marched it to its front door, and had a stern word with its parents. This version couldn’t keep up the tempo of pursuit. The manner of his dismissal still indicated an eye on the wane.
As for Haddin, I haven’t seen someone play and miss like that since a bunch of pranksters moved Stevie Wonder’s piano. The start of his innings was heart attack territory, even though all I had for dessert was a nectarine. Of his footwork, Pommie Mbangwa said lyrically, “Haddin has his feet in a bucket.”
Johnson, I suspect, attracts frustration because when he’s good, it’s such a pleasure to watch him play. There’s laughter in his bat and sand between his toes. He leans back with a smile to cart quality bowling all over the ground, his unruffled, breezy demeanour suggesting he’ll take us all for ice-cream just as soon as he’s done.
That said, he is in the side for his bowling. In that department, as he has done since a fluctuating Ashes series, he contributed modestly but meaningfully, with an important wicket in each innings.
It was left to Cummins to eschew modesty, and step into the spotlight’s glare. His launch of Imran Tahir’s final ball for four, to seal the win and square the series, will no doubt see some replays.
A good player has announced himself. In fairness to him and to the ever-hopeful public though, hype should not be entertained, however young and photogenic the subject’s smile.
Plenty of players have vanished despite the promise of their beginnings. True champions often make their entrances more discreetly, as true gentlemen do their exits.
And exits were on our minds at the last. As the ABC coverage wound down, Jim Maxwell, who had preceded the first day’s play with a tribute to the departed Peter Roebuck, noted how much his friend would have enjoyed what we had just witnessed.
“We miss you, Roeby,” added Geoff Lawson simply, as the final transmission beeps came in. With summer about to start a little emptier, there’s no doubt we will.
Of the match, of the efforts, of Australia’s resilience after Newlands, and of the lack of fanfare in the end, you imagine Roebuck would have approved.