The first Test of the four-match series gets underway on Thursday and our cricket columnist takes a look at just why this series usually delivers plenty of drama.
BANGALORE: There are few rivalries in sport that compare with the white-knuckle intensity of rugby Tests between the New Zealand All Blacks and South Africa’s Springboks. South Africa may be sinking like a stone down the rankings at the moment, but over the years, their clashes have been the rugby equivalent of cricket’s Ashes.
It is quite a different story on the cricket field. By the time South Africa were readmitted to the international fold in 1992, after more than two decades of apartheid-era isolation, the Frank Worrell Trophy — contested between Australia and West Indies — had become the sport’s premier prize, its de facto world championship. Those were two teams journeying in opposite directions — Australia toward the summit, and West Indies slaloming downhill.
South Africa’s near-immediate impact — Fanie de Villiers took six for 43 in a famous victory in Sydney as the visitors took a share of the spoils in their first series back on Australian soil — on their return helped filled the void left by West Indies’ rapid decline. It helped that the two sides played similar cricket, with tenacious batsmanship, high-quality pace bowling and exceptional catching. What gave Australia the edge was the leg-spin genius of Shane Warne.
South Africa’s frustration in the 1990s is best summed up by the images from that dramatic World Cup semifinal at Edgbaston in 1999, when a tie sent Australia through to the final. But in the Test arena, it revealed itself most keenly in Adelaide in 1997-98, when the late Hansie Cronje, who would be done for match-fixing two years later, put a stump through the umpires’ dressing room door in anger at decisions that had cost his side a series-levelling win.
Post-apartheid, this has also been a bonkers rivalry. Good luck to anyone trying to make sense of it.
South Africa have won their last three series in Australia, a place where most other sides go to be stripped of pride, dignity and even their skills. As for Australia, they have not lost a series in the southern cape since readmission. While winning five of seven, they have won 13 Tests to six, and three of those South African victories have come with the series already lost.
Time after time, Australia have found heroes to thwart their hosts. At Port Elizabeth in March 1997, in one of the greatest matches ever played, Mark Waugh stroked an epic 116 — no one else passed 55 in the match — to lead Australia past a target of 270 on a spiteful pitch.
That series also saw one of the game’s funnier on-field exchanges. When Daryll Cullinan came out to bat, Warne, who had tormented him with his flipper in Australia, greeted him with: “I want to get you out again. I’ve been waiting four years for this.” An exasperated Cullinan turned around and told Warne: “It looks like you’ve spent it eating, too.” He lost the on-field tussle once again, but Cullinan won the verbal war.
Five years later, Adam Gilchrist, who preferred to let his bat do most of the talking, smashed 204 off just 213 balls to knock the stuffing out of South Africa on just the second day of the series.
Memories of the 2009 series are invariably centered around the poignant image of the late Phillip Hughes on tiptoe, carving balls through the off side. After 0 and 75 on debut in Johannesburg, Hughes — who wouldn’t scale such heights again — sealed the series with innings of 115 and 160 in Durban. Almost a decade on, we can only wonder how good he could have been.
In late 2011, it was another debutant that gave Australia a series-leveling win in Johannesburg. Humiliated in Cape Town, where they crashed to 47 all out in the second innings, Australia ground out a tense two-wicket win on the back of Pat Cummins, then just 18, taking six for 79 in the second innings and then making 13 not out.
The last series, four years ago, was decided by David Warner’s three centuries and the searing pace of Mitchell Johnson. Fresh from destroying England in the Ashes, he took 12 for 127 in the opening Test at Centurion, and 22 for the series. Graeme Smith, who had led South Africa for over a decade and whose fingers and body had often been at the receiving end of Johnson’s thunderbolts, called it a day after that 2-1 loss.
Both teams have frightening pace batteries to call on, and this series will doubtless be decided by which batting unit can minimise the damage. As cricket-lovers, we can only hope that the batsmen conjure up some of the magic that ‘Afghanistan’ — one of the crueller nicknames for Mark ‘The Forgotten’ Waugh — showed us in the Eastern Cape just over two decades ago.
