Neil's India Tour Diary - Week 3

Tuesday, 18 January

Training was cancelled at Boland Park with some extremely welcome summer rain lowering recent simmering temperatures by at least 10 degrees and offering some respite not just to the residents of the Western Cape and Boland, but to the Boland Park outfield, which was threatening to ‘burn’.

“Momentum is a real thing, we got some going at the Wanderers and continued it at Newlands so, although it’s a different format and we have different players, we’re hoping to carry it forward into the ODI series,” said captain, Temba Bavuma.

The two biggest talking points were the return of Quinton de Kock to national colours and whether the Proteas would play two spinners, have five or six bowling options with a batting allrounder – Dwaine Pretorius or Wayne Parnell – at No 6.

“A sixth bowling option is a luxury to have and, as a captain, I would like to have as many options as I can,” Bavuma said. “You have to accept that not all the (five) bowlers will hit their straps so it’s good to have a back-up.”

Asked about De Kock’s state of body and mind and readiness for action, Bavuma said: “He’s with the squad and has been training with us. I’m not aware of any physical issues or mental issues, either. He’s fit and healthy…it’s good to see him again. It (his decision to retire from test cricket) is a decision we respect – we miss him in the test team. He’ll have a point to prove and I’m sure he’s as excited as we are to have him back.”

Although the captain wasn’t sure what the composition of his bowling line-up would be, he confirmed that there was no question about the top order: “Quinton up front, Janneman Malan has done well, so I don’t see that changing and I’m back in the mix (after injury) at No 3. The main question is whether we have an allrounder at No 6…”

There is, of course, the exciting option of including Marco Jansen in the ODI XI for the first time after his stunning start to test cricket during which he claimed 19 wickets at an average of just 16.47.

“Marco has been drafted in – the world has now seen what qualities he has, the ‘x-factor’, so it was a no-brainer to get him into the white ball team. He’ll be in strong contention. Everyone is in contention, and we also have three spinners, Shamsi, Maharaj and Linde, who will be suited to conditions in Paarl where the wicket is lower and skiddier than the Highveld wickets.

The captain also spoke of his ‘respect’ for the Indian team, which will no doubt still be hurting after their test series defeat.

Sunday, 16 January

A day off in test cricket is a golden opportunity to do something special, visit a landmark, go to a restaurant, play golf on a special course. The day has been booked off, there are no meetings planned and nobody is expecting you home. Cape Town had her summer dress on and was flaunting her beaches and mountain.

It was happy days for the players who aren’t involved in the ODI series because they were released from the bubble and were free to walk up Lion’s Head, taste wine at Buitenverwachting and surf at Muizenberg. But for those who now start preparation for the first ODI in Paarl on Wednesday, there was no escape.

Speaking of Paarl, Virat Kohli’s resignation as Indian test captain came out of the blue – at least to everyone outside the Indian bubble. Kohli is the only cricketer on the Forbes top-100 rich list for sports people. He is a millionaire superstar with a strong sense of destiny and his place in history. His drive to become the first Indian captain to win a test series in South Africa was all-consuming.

For seven years he captained his country in all formats until BCCI President Saurav Ganguly attempted clumsily to clip his wings of power by removing him from the white-ball captaincy just before this tour. At least Ganguly is a figure of great power and influence, unlike the man who was mainly responsible for his decision to stand down from the test leadership.

Graeme Smith, another man of great standing in the game, is famously credited with the resignations of three England captains – Nasser Hussain, Andrew Strauss and Michael Vaughan. Faf du Plessis has Michael Clarke chalked up on his hit list. So takes the credit for Kohli’s departure as captain?

A quiet, softly spoken batter from Paarl, 28-year-old Keegan Petersen. As much as Kagiso Rabada, Marco Jansen, Lungi Ngidi and Dean Elgar contributed to the stunning series win, it was Petersen’s stoic defence and punchy run-scoring which did most to kill Kohli’s dream and persuade him that his journey was over. Funny old game… and off we go again, in Paarl.

Friday, 14 January

Cheteshwar Pujara is a quiet, modest man not prone to making bold statements and never likely to over-celebrate his successes. He has played many pivotal roles in India’s successes over the last few years in his efficient, undemonstrative way. He has never reacted to bowlers' comments, preferring to turn his back on them and concentrate on the next delivery.

Moments before the fourth ball of the 40th during South Africa’s run-chase at Newlands, Pujara walked three quarters of the way to the batsmen from his position at first slip. Close enough to the batter to be heard but not close enough to the stump-mic for comments to be shared publicly, he said what he had to say and returned to his position. Keegan Petersen, on 59, ignored him – very Pujara-like. Turned his back on him.

The next delivery from Mohammad Shami flew off the edge of the bat and straight at Pujara’s chest. It had worked! Nice guy Pujara had sledged someone out! Except, he made a hash of as straightforward of slip-catch as you could hope for. And down it went.

It is entirely possible, of course, that the fielder was simply asking whether the penguins were still nesting at Boulders Beach in Simon's Town, seeing as everyone was going to have the fifth day off. Oh no, the teams are in a bubble so it couldn’t have been that. Perhaps he was enquiring about Petersen’s ‘trigger’ movement, or if he knew what was for lunch. Probably not in the middle of an over.

There is potential to massively over-think this, but I can’t help wondering whether Virat Kohli’s emotional petulance affected even the most phlegmatic member of his team. When the Indian captain lost the plot at the end of the third evening, remonstrating and yelling at stumps, encouraging a siege-mentality, several other players followed his juvenile example. The only outcome that really mattered was that 41 runs accrued from the seven overs which were bowled once Kohli had inspired his team into melt-down. That was where the test match was lost, I believe. On the third evening, not the fourth morning.

I love Virat Kohli the batter, I’m grateful for his passion – especially for test cricket – and I enjoy his enthusiasm. It’s impossible not to admire the passion with which he plays the game. But after what happened at Newlands I suspect the BCCI, and its president, Saurav Ganguly, might be considering clipping his wings even further after removing him from the white-ball captaincy.

But right now it is Keegan Petersen’s moment, and Marco Jansen’s, and all of the Proteas. Bloody brilliant. Gutsy and skillful and calm at the same time. I suspect the Proteas will find it considerably harder to win the ODI series but they have surprised most people once, so why not again…

Thursday, 13 January

Another remarkable and occasionally bizarre day of test cricket, both on and off the field as the series builds towards its crescendo on the fourth day of the deciding test match at Newlands.

Dean Elgar was given a reprieve on 22 which could have made a material difference to the outcome of the result – and it was all down to technology rather than human error.

The South African captain looked stone dead when Ravichandran Ashwin trapped him LBW and he appeared to agree, grimly asking for a DRS review through gritted teeth and with a rueful grimace on his face. There is a joke in international cricket that, since the number of reviews was increased from two to three per innings, captains have routinely exercised their prerogative to save one exclusively for their use. So Elgar did, hoping against hope…

Even the poker-faced Marais Erasmus, one of the best umpires in the world, couldn’t stifle a look of puzzled whimsy when the ball-tracker somehow showed the delivery from India’s champion off-spinner passing fractionally over the top of the stumps. “That is impossible,” Erasmus was heard muttering. It was even more surprising than the delivery from Lungi Ngidi to Mayank Agarwal in the first innings of the first test in Centurion which looked like it was passing over the stumps but was shown to hitting the top of leg stump and ended an opening stand of 117. India have not had the rub of the DRS green.

It is a conspiracy theory of the most outrageous sort to imagine the DRS system can be manipulated by the home television production company. Umpires may not be neutral in Covid times but ‘Hawkeye’ is an independent organisation with its own experts and is not controlled by the SuperSport production team. Or any production team around the world.

Nonetheless Virat Kohli was incensed and vented his frustration directly into the stump microphone just moments later: “Focus as well on your team when they shine the ball, not just the opposition…trying to catch people all the time!” It wasn’t a direct accusation, but the implication of bias was still a shock. But Kohli has not been fined or even reprimanded for more significant attempts to bully or intimidate, so stand by for another shoulder-shrug from the game’s administrators.

Off the field commentators were escorted off the premises for not possessing a double-vaccination certificate and other members of the two production teams were warned that their participation in the ODI series which follows the test series will be cancelled unless they comply.

Personal choice cannot be compromised. Nobody should be forced to have one vaccination, never mind two. But ‘choice’ extends to public enterprises, too. And they have a right to extend invitations to those who choose to be vaccinated.

South Africa require 111 runs to win with eight wickets in hand. It may sound simple, but it may be the most complex and important equation facing South African cricket in the last decade, or more…

Wednesday, 12 January

There’s so much to like to about Keegan Petersen. Unlike those batters who are keenly aware that they are pleasing on the eye, the 28-year-old from Paarl looks like an accidental stylist, unaware of the aesthetics of his game. He must have been told by team mates and admirers over the years, but he’s so obviously not ‘showy’ it’s hard to imagine it has ever sunk in, never mind affected him.

As Cheteshwar Pujara said before the start of the day’s play, “the bowlers will always be in the game but it is also possible for a batsman to get ‘in’ on this wicket and score runs.” It took 40 or so balls before Petersen looked settled having also endured and survived an admirably long commentary stint from Virat Kohli who reminded him of every error he made and assured him that his return to the change room was imminent. It wasn’t.

Pujara has a matter-of-fact personality and, in keeping with an increasing trend among professional sports people during Covid times, he can’t be bothered with mind games. He just told the truth: “We were 30-40 runs short of where we wanted to be in our first innings. We didn’t bat well enough and we will just have to bowl well to get back in the game and then bat much better in our second innings.” Simple.

But, when India aren’t dominating and winning easily at home, they have been finding ways to dig themselves out of holes on overseas tours for so long that they now expect themselves to do it every time they need to. And they usually do. And today they did it again, at least with the ball. There is still time for the Proteas bowlers to cause another slip-up.

By common consensus a fourth innings target of around 250 at the Wanderers was believed to represent a highly unlikely run-chase and yet South Africa got there with seven wickets intact. Exactly the same scenario applies now. India, at 57-2, lead by 70 runs after the second day with eight wickets left. If Virat Kohli plays the innings he dreams of, even just matching his 79 of the first innings, he may well have done enough to secure that place in the game’s history he so craves as the first Indian captain to win a series in South Africa.

It will require another monumental effort from South Africa’s bowlers to dismiss the tourists for something similar to the 223 they managed first time around, but it is entirely possible. It will need to be. Unlike the Wanderers pitch, which actually ‘calmed down’ as the match progressed, the Newlands surface will almost certainly become more volatile. But the more fervent the bowlers become in search of wickets, the more errant they are likely to be.

Calm, patient and disciplined should be the approach of the bowlers on both sides in the remaining innings. It could just as easily apply to the batters, but the percentage of ‘wicket balls’ will increase significantly from day three with scorching temperatures predicted and a rapidly drying and deteriorating pitch. The batters will need to take more chances than the bowlers. What a contest.

Meanwhile, it’s good to see that Newlands still has crowd control measures in place for a sudden surge in attendance. Which will never happen.

Tuesday, 11 January

It was a day on which a capacity crowd would almost certainly have provided bountiful business the catering outlets, mostly the bars. The pace of pace was slow but no less intriguing for that. Days of attritional cricket used to be called ‘days for the connoisseur’ which was a euphemism for boring. Besides, it made it sound like ‘casual’ cricket lovers couldn’t enjoy a tense struggle.

Virat Kohli’s intense determination to become the first Indian captain to win a test series manifested itself in long periods of almost masochistic self-denial as he absorbed all of the pressure South Africa’s quartet of quicks could apply on their best bowling day of the series.

Just when the century which has eluded him for almost two years was within sight, if not touching distance, wickets starting falling again. So desperate was he to manufacture a way of staying the crease that he refused a single of the third ball of an over with his No 9, Jasprit Bumrah, at the crease. It looked like muddled thinking, born of his manic need to control the destiny of this tour, and therefore his own.

The Indian captain played no shot to a remarkable 79 of the 158 deliveries it required for him to reach his slowest test 50. Such statistics are usually evidence that the bowling had been too wide and unthreatening, but in this instance it was entirely down to Kohli’s extreme and precise judgement – and determination not to make a mistake. In retrospect, possibly only after the match, he may reflect that he was too conservative. A total of 223 looks well under par but that is up to South Africa’s batters.

The test started in bizarre circumstances with Palmyra Road, running alongside Newlands, closed to traffic as it is when 18 000 people are in attendance. Lavish crowd control barriers were in place and no less than 150 security personnel employed. There were less than 900 people in the stadium, none of them paying spectators. Just when you thought common sense had begun to give Covid paranoia a run for its money, the madness returned.

Monday, 10 January

There isn’t usually much captains can say during pre-match press briefings that catch their audience by surprise but Dean Elgar and Virat Kohli don’t deal in cliches, which makes for refreshing listening.

Kohli was in an unusually good mood, smiling and answering questions in considerable depth. Both he and Elgar talk often about the physical toll that test cricket takes on its combatants and came up with a neat trio of qualities required in order to get through five days: “passion, commitment and madness.” He also confirmed that Mohammad Siraj would not be playing and that he was blessed to have a such a strong group of fast bowlers to choose from that he was “…confused but happy before each game.”

Elgar said there were no major injury concerns in the Proteas camp ahead of the Newlands decider. “There's always niggles when you play in a series, test cricket pushes your body to the limit. If you're not a little bit sore, if you're not a little bit bruised, then you’re obviously not working or enough. So there’s just a little bit of wear and tear going around at the moment, which is perfectly fine.”

When Elgar says he doesn’t see there being “too many household changes,” it’s safe to assume he’s not considering any. Like coach Mark Boucher, he’s a little ‘old school’ regarding selection: “Competing in a big test series (means) trying to be as stable as possible with regards to our playing XI,” Elgar said.

The Proteas captain was asked about the absence of Kohli at the Wanderers – and whether his presence there might have made a difference to the result: “Virat brings a different dynamic to the game. I don't think I missed him but, I think, potentially his team did, just from a captaincy and maybe a strategy point of view. Obviously, he’s a world class player and very experienced, his name speaks for itself. And that sets rightly so it's, it's one of the more respected cricketers around. But it doesn't matter who we’re playing against, as a team we need to focus on us.”

If there was a change being contemplated in the XI it might have involved swapping bowling all rounder Marco Jansen for batting all rounder Wiaan Mulder in order to provide deeper batting depth. The captain did not sound like that was likely: “Jansen doesn't have the experience but he definitely doesn't lack the talent and ability. But we need to take ownership and responsibility when it comes to the top six, we need to do the hard work in order for a guy like that to come in and play his natural (attacking) game.”

Elgar said the match pitch “looks like a pretty decent cricket wicket - I think they obviously want us to play five days of cricket!”