Neil's England Diary - Week 1

Day 7, 1 December

Sometimes in sport, as in life, you just need to put your hands up and admit you weren’t good enough. Or that the opposition were better on the day. The Proteas took a shellacking at Newlands tonight with very little to relieve the pain apart from a brilliant innings by Rassie van der Dussen – and the view. And the stadium DJ who played some fine tunes.

Never have I seen two such divergent innings played by the same batsman in two consecutive matches as Dawid Malan produced within two days. Having anchored England to a gritty victory with one ball to spare in Paarl, struggling to 25 off 29 balls before accelerating to 55* off 40, tonight he smashed his first three deliveries for 4, 4 and 6 and finished unbeaten on 99 from just 47 balls as England won with 14 balls to spare chasing 192.

“I haven’t played two such different innings back-to-back,” Malan admitted. “I’ve played a lot of T20 cricket and after the struggle in Paarl I just decided to change my approach a bit and be positive. I knew my first ball from (Anrich) Nortje would be short so I managed to get that one away for four. From there on it just took off.”

It did indeed. Tabraiz Shamsi bore much of the brunt with 0-57 from his four overs, but who knows how many Lutho Sipamla could have conceded if he had bowled his full allocation? As it was, 2.4 overs disappeared for a toe-curling 45 runs. He could have gone for 70.

Sipamla is a high quality, high potential cricketer. This was just his seventh T20 International. Which reminds me of Dale Steyn’s third ODI in which he bowled five overs and took 1-58. He didn’t do too badly after that.

Van der Dussen was breathtakingly brilliant tonight. He can be both professor and blacksmith as a batsman. Over-thinking and analysing may have led to the ponderous 25 from 29 balls at Boland Park on Friday, desperate as he was to wrench his team to a competitive total, but when the forearms took over from the forehead tonight, he was devastating with 74 from a mere 32 balls with a quintet of both boundaries. The Lions senior pro has rapidly become a respected voice and thinker in the Proteas change room. Fearless instinct may be the option on the field.

It is the first time the Proteas have been whitewashed in a T20 International series. Disappointing, naturally, but not disastrous. Sports teams in transition are better judged in years to come, not months.

Day 6, 30 November

In years gone by I failed to understand why so many international captains were so grumpy for so much of the time. These days I find it reassuring. They have a lot to deal with, much of it mundane and repetitive.

When Quinton de Kock was appointed limited-overs captain he was questioned ad nauseam about the workload of captaining, keeping wicket and opening the batting. He said he was confident that he could cope and that wicket keeping helped him read the game and made him a better captain.

But it was a subject that was bound to crop up again and again, every time he looked remotely out of form or his team was losing. In fact, De Kock has not looked remotely out of form having made 30 in both of the first two T20 Internationals – from 23 and 18 balls. He is striking the ball as sweetly as ever.

The latest round of questions concerned the fourth task of the captain, one that can be as onerous and tiresome as any – his media commitments. Most sports followers generally only consume two sources of media and are therefore unaware that the captain often does up to five media engagements before and after matches.

Yesterday he ‘Zoomed’ with the media from his room in the Vineyard Hotel. Just before we started he was asked by CSA’s excellent ‘in-bubble’ media officer to close the curtains behind him to reduce the glare. He smiled – just a little. But enough. He answered the predictable questions well enough and never came close to making excuses for South Africa’s two losses although it seemed a little simplistic to say that it was “…basically just two overs which cost us the games.”

Beuran Hendricks’s nightmare over of 28 at Newlands and Lungi Ngidi’s concession of 18 runs in the 18th over at Boland Park did both look pivotal but there is always more to winning and losing than one over. Anyway, was he getting fed up with all the time spent talking to the media?

“No,” he said, with more emphasis than usual. “I’ve got lots of time to do these things. It’s not like I have anything else to do,” he said, glancing around his room, the ironic smile quite obvious now. “Pre-match interviews don’t affect the way I play so, for me, it’s not a problem. It’s just a bit weird how we’re doing them at the moment, in the bubble.”

It was very good to see and hear. When magical players like De Kock lose their zeal, when any aspect of the game becomes a chore, the magic disappears. Perhaps he’ll score 80 at Newlands tonight and win the game…

Day 5, 29 November

Another nail-biter and another key over in which the game was, apparently, lost. On Friday night it was the 17th from Beuran Hendricks , which cost 28 runs. Today it was the 18th, bowled by Lungi Ngidi, which cost 18. But the game doesn’t really work like that. If the Proteas had scored another dozen runs, perhaps things would have been different.

As much as questions may be asked about Ngidi’s over, he has proved his temperament on numerous occasions. As many questions may be justifiably asked about Rassie van der Dussen’s inability to score a single boundary in his 29-ball innings of 25.

In a peculiar statistical quirk, man-of-the-match Dawid Malan, who grew up just down the road from Boland Park, was also on 25 from 29 balls with the game at a critical stage. He then crashed two fours and a six in the next four balls and suddenly the landscape had changed completely.

Van der Dussen will point to the fact that he was in the company of George Linde with only four bowlers to come – he had to bat through the innings. Others will point to the fact that boundaries win these games and that he had to back himself to accelerate. Van der Dussen is an honest and open man, happy to be his own greatest critic. He will know better than anyone whether he could, or should have tried, to do more.

Linde has taken his chance at international level in the last two games, emphatically. He credits the lock-down months for an improvement in his game having spent the time working intensely on ‘specifics’. Whatever they were, they’ve worked beautifully. Coming to the crease at 95-5in the 14th over with only the four specialist bowlers behind him, Linde knew all too well that his team’s hopes of a competitive total rested squarely on his shoulders.

He responded with an innings of 29 from just 20 balls in a partnership of 44 with the strangely subdued van der Dussen and then bowled his four overs, including the opening over of England’s reply, for just 27 runs.

Tabraiz Shamsi, too, showed his class with 3-19 on a helpful surface while Anrich Nortje’s first two overs cost a remarkable four runs. His final 4-0-21-0 and Kagiso Rabada’s astonishing attempt to defend three runs in the final over – it took England five balls to score them – concluded a game of much entertainment. We need to be patient and forgiving. For many reasons.

Day 4, 28 November

Nobody can accuse me of not taking social-distancing seriously. OK, the photograph makes it look like I’m a full cricket pitch away from Jonny Bairstow for our post-match interview at Newlands last night but it was, in fact, about five metres.

The 31-year-old Yorkshireman has produced plenty of dazzling innings for his country but his 86 from 48 balls, a career-best, was especially brutal – and creative. I asked him whether he was consciously still working on his game, learning new ways to hit the ball into new areas.

“Absolutely, I’m always trying to evolve my game. That’s the beauty of playing in the IPL surrounded by the best players in the world. You see other batsmen playing shots and hitting good balls to the boundary and you want to do it yourself, so you learn and practise how to do it. You can’t afford to stand still, you’ve got to keep getting better,” Bairstow said.

It summed up the approach of captain Eoin Morgan who made it clear before the series that the rest of the world was catching up and would soon overtake the England team unless they kept improving and “pushing the boundaries of what is possible.”

My concern after the game was that fans blamed Beuran Hendricks for the loss. His final over, the 17th of the England innings, may have cost the game but, as Faf du Plessis said afterwards, it can happen to anyone. But suggesting that Hendricks should not have been in the starting XI is preposterously unfair.

For those who may have forgotten, Hendricks was a skilful enough T20 bowler to be included in the Proteas World Cup squad in 2014 and it was his brilliant death over trickery which spared South Africa the embarrassment of defeat to the Netherlands when then defended 145 against the minnows to win by six runs. He was also the standout bowler with 2-31 in the semifinal defeat to India. And he has been the form bowler in domestic cricket this season.

Onward and upward. Given the debacle of the home team’s preparation for the England series, they performed outstandingly at Newlands last night against the best limited-overs team in the world. Nobody likes losing, but in the circumstances, it was a cracking contest.

Day 3, 27 November

It’s fair to say the only time I have arrived at a ground almost four hours before the start of play when I was unaware that a scheduled day game had been rearranged into a day-nighter. I was at Newlands for longer before the game than for the actual game itself. But better safe than sorry.

As it transpired the CSA Operations Team and stadium management were to be congratulated on arrangements. The stadium stewards and security were well-briefed and, just as importantly, cheerful. Tension was understandably high before the first game of six but the staff did their best to ease it.

The atmosphere within the stadium wasn’t quite as peculiar as many had expected. It certainly couldn’t be described as ‘eery’ thanks to the PA announcer and the music. England’s two intra-squad practise matches were positively weird with the loudest noises being the players' voices and the sound of bat on ball.

Given the Proteas chaotic preparation during which they lost the services of Andile Phehlukwayo and David Miller to positive Covid-19 tests, it was a brilliant team performance against the odds.

Faf du Plessis and his captaincy successor, Quinton de Kock, combined to take 38 runs off the third and fourth overs – 14 from Archer’s second over and an eye-watering 24 off Tom Curran’s second. Even at the time, it felt like that might be a critical passage of play in the game.

George Linde’s T20 international debut was one to remember. He may not be a household name to the majority of casual or occasional supporters but he is one of the most respected cricketers in the country among his peers and it would have been no surprise to them when he launched Tom Curran for six over midwicket in the final over of South Africa’s innings.

It may have been a surprise, however, when he opened the bowling and had the eyebrow-raising figures of 2-0-2-2 before finishing with 2-20 from his four overs.

At 34-3 most teams would have been consolidated but England are not most teams. Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes counter-attacked in glorious style. They were not to be denied. The over of 28 from Beuran Hendricks turned out to be the difference. He will, no doubt, be devastated. But it’s a harsh and unforgiving format.

Day 2, 26 November

It’s easier for the English media to adapt to the ‘new normal’ having lived through a full summer of international cricket in the Covid era, but it’s still a little weird for those of us doing it for the first time.

Eoin Morgan is such an intensely sincere person that interviewing him from a distance of five metres soon makes no difference. He holds your gaze, listens to the question, pauses to think. It makes little difference that you are so far apart, physically.

I asked whether the immense, almost unprecedented strength in depth in the England squad might cause problems with players feeling disenchanted rather than invigorated to compete for a place. It was a half-volley. He could have smashed it anywhere.

Instead, he replied: “Yes, that can happen. It depends on the length of the tour. This one is quite short so everybody is competing for places and pushing hard. But during the English summer, there were squad players who became frustrated and would rather have been playing for their counties, that’s true.”

After Morgan had spoken, test captain Joe Root was offered up to the English media contingent, numbering just five from the usual 25. Once again, social distancing protocols applied. Root is not actually in the T20 squad – only in the ODI squad – but innings of 77 and 46 from 26 balls in the warm-up games inevitably brought questions abought the ‘fight’ between him and the coaching staff around his place in their T20 plans.

“It’s not a fight. They have said I’m not in their plans and I respect that. But I would like to play all three formats and I believe I’m good enough, so I’ll just keep on playing and we’ll see what happens.”

Day 1, 24 November

It is hard to imagine that two top-flight international teams could have prepared more differently for a series. England’s pre-tour plans could not have been any better and South Africa’s could hardly have been worse.

The tourists played an excellent, high quality intra-squad 40-over match at Newlands on Saturday and had another fulsome T20 outing at Boland Park on Monday night. The strength of ‘Team Morgan’ and ‘Team Buttler’ meant either side could easily have represented their country without raising an eyebrow.

The two positive Covid-19 tests in the Proteas camp, and four players self-isolating, meant the cancellation of both of their practise matches and even precluded an all-in middle practise with nets reduced to ‘mini-bubbles’ of just three or four players.

Even life in the Vineyard Hotel has been dramatically different for the two teams. Since the second positive test last Friday, the home team has “ceded the common areas to England” according to CSA chief medical officer, Dr Shuaib Manjra. So whereas the tourists can use the main entrance to the five-star luxury residence and head down the main corridors, the home team have been making use of ‘trade entrances’ and fire exits to find an alternative way around.

England have been given exclusive use of the hotel gym and pool with Proteas team management arranging for alternative gym equipment to be set up in a separate room. If the new measures and protocols succeed in reassuring Eoin Morgan’s men that they are safe from the possibility of infection, and the tour is not jeopardised, they will have been worth it. However extreme they seem to the rest of us who have been dining out and shopping in PicknPay for months. If the Proteas players and management all test negative today and again on Thursday, when both squads will be tested, life will at least return to ‘normal’ in the hotel.

Not that sitting two-at-a-table in the breakfast room with Perspex screens separating tables already set two metres apart feels much like normal. And the teams have separate dining areas anyway.

Having attended both of England’s warm-up matches I can assure those of you who will watch the six International matches from home that you will have a superior experience than those of us inside the stadium but outside the ‘bubble’. Stadium security staff are especially jumpy, just at the prospect or thought of a beach. But that’s fine – no complaints. There is an awful lot at stake, most notably around R70 million in broadcast and other related income.