Elgar's Last Dance...

Is an Encore Possible?

    Dean Elgar’s 185 is an innings that should, and will, live long in the memory of all cricket lovers. It will certainly carve out a niche for itself in his memory for as long as he has one. For the first time in his brilliant career, he allowed himself to paint the canvas artistically as well as pragmatically.

    Batters don’t get anywhere near the record Elgar has with just three or four shots. They get to play 85 Test matches and score over 5000 runs precisely because they have the ability to limit themselves to those shots, when the need arises. Which it often does in Test cricket.

    Elgar, like England’s Alistair Cook, can play pretty much every shot in the book. They may not play those which don’t feature in conventional coaching text books, but opening the batting in Test cricket is a starvation diet. Get greedy with the extra-cover drive, and you’ll go hungry. Nudge it to fine leg, and you’ll eat for a long time.

    This approach requires an extraordinary repress of ego. Fast bowlers delivering thunderous volleys of short balls, which Cook and Elgar could happily have pulled or hooked in a domestic one-day game, have to be ignored. It’s all about percentages. Score 70% more runs with 30% of your game.

Elgar’s retirement announcement freed him up from many of these constraints. He was getting himself “…into scoring positions and looking for runs” more than ever before. “I wish I’d done that a bit earlier in my career,” he said wistfully after the second day when he was 140 unbeaten runs to the good.

    A witheringly emphatic victory by an innings and 32-runs at Centurion has given Elgar the chance to leave Test cricket on one the great high notes of his career. Kagiso Rabada and Nandre Burger took 14 wickets between them, but Elgar will always know that it was he who gave them the opportunity to win the game and deny India their ninth chance to breach the final frontier, victory in South Africa.

    And now what?

    Shukri Conrad was bravely and fundamentally correct in his conversations with Elgar before the series. The Test team had to move on and, given how few games there were in the schedule, new openers needed to be given the exposure. Also, it had been 38 innings and over two years since Elgar’s last hundred.

Their backgrounds may be very different, but Conrad and Elgar share a similar, uncompromising resolve. Tough decisions – no problem. Elgar accepted Conrad’s ‘future plan’ through gritted teeth and has been stoic since. Conrad did not suggest that Elgar should ‘retire’ but telling him that he would not be selected after the India Tests was a strong suggestion. Neither man is prone to changing their minds.

    Which might be very unfortunate for future generations of South African Test cricketers. A scintillating Test match, with unprecedented crowds for three days, has briefly seen the Test light flicker again. The only thing which might keep it alive for longer than the next two years is a place in the World Test Championship final in 2025.

    The irony of the ‘big three’ hegemony of Test cricket – in which they play each other in five-Test series while everyone else plays two-Test series – is that they diminish their chances of reaching the final. The ‘small seven’, limited largely to two-Test series, have a far greater chance of reaching the final given the ‘win-percentage’ ratio. 

    So even if India can conjure up a bounce-back win at Newlands, South Africa’s Centurion victory has given them an excellent start to their WTC campaign. Next up, two Tests in New Zealand in February. After that, two in the Caribbean against the West Indies in August, two in Bangladesh in October, two against Sri Lanka at home in December. The final two are scheduled for this time next year against Pakistan, presumably at the same venues.

Dec/Jan: 2 Tests vs India (home)

Feb: 2 Tests vs New Zealand (away)

Aug: 2 Tests vs West Indies (away)

Oct: 2 Tests vs Bangladesh (away)

Dec: 2 Tests vs Sri Lanka (home)

Dec/Jan: 2 Tests vs Pakistan (home)

    Even amateur crystal ball gazers can see that the two ‘series’ against India and New Zealand are likely to present the stiffest challenges (with due respect to Bangladesh in home conditions) and that the results in Mount Maunganui and Hamilton could easily determine whether South Africa make the final in June 2025. If the ‘B’ team can win either of those Tests, it could make the difference.

    Final thought: New Zealand is, statistically, the most difficult country for opening batters. Even harder than South Africa. Elgar will be freshly retired having been in the best form of his life. I understand he is being lined up by Essex as a replacement for – yep, Sir Alistair Cook. He will do extremely well in Chelmsford and deserves the chance to earn some pounds in the final years of his career. But not taking him to New Zealand may cost South African cricket far more. It’s not too late to ask…