"What we came here for..."

Cricketers and their love of golf

    The intensity of the disappointment following defeat at the Oval came as a surprise. After all, England were on a roll before the Test series against South Africa started having won their previous four Test matches and wasn’t as if the Proteas’ weakness, their batting, was unknown.

    At Lord’s they did what they have been doing so well for much of the last 18 months by taking 20 wickets in glorious fashion and papering over the batting frailties. Winning by an innings having scored just 326 was a mighty effort, and mighty rare in the history of the game.

    South Africa were on the receiving end of the lowest ever in 1932 when Australia were bowled out for 153 at the MCG in 1932 before showing what a handy score that was by bowling the touring South Africans out for 36 and 45 to win by an innings and 72 runs.

    The Lord’s achievement wasn’t a South African record, however. Five years ago, when India pulled out of the Boxing Day Test at the last minute in 2017, Zimbabwe were ushered down to St.George’s Park as last-minute replacements to take part in the country’s first ever day/night Test. The hosts declared on 309-9 and Zimbabwe were despatched for 68 and 121 for an innings and 120-run defeat. But the Lord’s total comes in at 30th on the all-time list of low scores to earn an innings victory.

    The decision to play Simon Harmer in the second Test at Old Trafford was entirely legitimate, even if it had been decided weeks earlier. The decision to bat first on winning the toss was made at the same time. Captain Dean Elgar and Kagiso Rabada both confirmed that after the Test. Pick two spinners and you are compelled to bat first.

    That’s true most of the time, but not always. Not under leaden grey skies in Manchester with Anderson, Broad and Robinson fighting over first use of a Dukes ball. The Old Trafford pitch was dry and receptive to spin from the first day, there was no need to wait for it to deteriorate. Anyway, the tourists did well to reach 150 and the Test was soon over.

    At this point a three-month rewind is neccessary, to when the itinerary was first published. The nine-day gap between Old Trafford and the Oval stood out like a beacon. A warning beacon. The questions about what might happen during that time went unanswered, both before and during the tour. After the Old Trafford defeat, in which South Africa were dismissed for under 200 in both innings, Elgar was asked: “What are you actually going to DO? Maybe play a club game?”

    “Very funny,” he replied. “We’ll regroup, gather our thoughts and prepare for the next Test.” It was never intended to be a sarcastic or facetious question. It was genuine. After all, Sarel Erwee prepared for the tour by playing club cricket for Weybridge in the Surrey League and thousands of international batters through the decades have harvested confidence by feeling the ball hit the middle of the bat and scoring ‘easy’ runs in club cricket.

    The Proteas management were asked, politely, to share some details of what their plans, in fact, were. If a sports tour is worth covering then it’s worth covering properly. For two decades I have strongly, sometimes aggressively advocated more ‘down time’ on long tours and actively encouraged managers and captains to ‘release’ players from tours occasionally just to experience 48 or 72 hours out of the ‘bubble’ of hotel/practise life. Graeme Smith did that following his back-to-back double centuries at the start of the 2003 tour of England.

    Two days after Old Trafford, a perfunctory, one-paragraph statement from Proteas management said the squad would be “staying together for a short break in the West Midlands.” It wasn’t just unhelpful to those of us trying to cover the tour, it seemed gratuitously secretive. If they were worried about their privacy it could easily have pointed out that this country’s sports fans and media, in football season especially, are far more interested in whether Huddersfield Town have signed a new left-back than there are in a touring cricket team.

    Anyway, it turns out they went to the luxury golf resort at the Belfry. It also transpired during the Oval Test that they had declined the ECB’s offer a two-day practise match against a ‘Select XI’ comprising the best of the country’s young cricketers not involved in The Hundred. It wouldn’t have been ‘first-class’, but that shouldn’t have been a problem with the Proteas having already downgraded their solitary 4-day practise match before the series against the England Lions by insisting on using 13 players.

    Two-day matches are not popular amongst players. They don’t ‘mean’ anything. They are ‘middle nets.’ But for batters low on form and confidence, they can make a big difference. And if the fixture had been accepted, Glenton Stuurman, Lutho Sipamla and Harmer, no doubt, wouldn’t have minded doing the bowling while Rabada, Ngidi, Nortje and Jansen put their feet up.

    It would probably have made no difference to the result at the Oval but it was a bad look, and they knew it would be which explains the ‘West Midlands’ and the failure ever to mention the possibility of a practise match. The nine-day gap between Tests was extended, of course, to eleven because the second Test thrashing came inside three days.

    Less than a third of the Test squad had been in England for the two preceding white-ball series. They were not ‘travel weary’ as many squads have been in years gone by. They could easily have played a practise match for the benefit of the batters and still enjoyed a significant period of “time away from the game” which is, genuinely, an increasingly critical part of playing international cricket.

    Elgar, when asked about the preceding 11 days before the Oval, said the players had, indeed, gathered their thoughts and “reminded ourselves of why we are here, which is to win a Test series.” A couple of days of bat-on-ball between Tests, and rounds of golf, might have been another useful reminder.