Posted by It was like they were running late, had got onto the motorway heading in the wrong direction and had to race to the next exit so that they could turn round and race back again. Batsman One made 107, Batsman Two made 66 and then the next highest score was six.
That big opening partnership built the tension and then, for the rest of the day, it was released one spurt at a time until the stores were dry. It was glorious stuff all round and crammed full of the oddities that make Test cricket so great.
David Warner’s dismissal led to a prolonged spell of braking while Alex Doolan was at the crease and then the U-turn came when the ball started reverse swinging. We got Dale Steyn’s red-faced fist pumping celebration four times after a prolonged Waqar Younis impression with the old ball. Umpire Dharmasena inadvertently revving his celebrations up further on one occasion by delaying the finger raise.
We got Chris Rogers munting a magnificent hundred before being run out – the third umpire taking several minutes to determine whether the bails were out of their groove or not. What other sport even has something like ‘the bails being out of their groove’?
Shaun Marsh had lasted two balls in the first innings. In the second, he halved his stay at the crease. Then Brad Haddin recreated his first innings dismissal exactly. Haddin knows precisely where his off stump is. If someone can now inform him that the middle stump is immediately inside it, he’ll be fine.
Towards the end, we got Graeme Smith saying “It’s another warm-up if you don’t oblige,” to Nathan Lyon when South Africa needed one wicket to win – alluding to the fact that there could still have been a fifth day of this match. Fortunately for everyone, Nathan Lyon did oblige and then we even got bathos as relentlessly high quality cricket made way for a Dean Elgar lbw to finish things. Needless to say, Lyon had got an edge on it.
The score had been 141-1 at tea.
Sometimes they say of a match that ‘it had everything’. But you can never have everything in a Test match. There are simply too many things to have. However, this one had a nice selection.
Anyone know if it is raining out there as was forecast?If Rogers hadn’t been run out could they have blocked and got away with today as a washout. I only got to see glimpses of the match as the wife as no interest apart from when England play. What I saw was great test cricket!!
Intermittent play would have been possible.
Fantastic cricket. The band really makes this venue special, whether or not it makes umpiring decisions tougher.
Possibly the first Test to involve munting. Do not look this word up in the Urban Dictionary if you are easily disturbed.
Yeah, that wasn’t the meaning we had in mind. It was more a reference to the ugliness of the innings.
That is something I had never heard of. Why would anyone do that or invent a strange word for it.
Quite. Once dead, it is much more appropriate to leave a corpse safely buried in the grave, rather than dig it up to get perverted enjoyment from it.
In totally unrelated news, Australia are going to pick Shane Watson again.
lmao!
(munting?! nope, i never heard of that either. assuming such practices even exist – and there’s no concept so outlandish that someone somewhere hasn’t already at least tried to do it – how would its ultra-specialist jargon get into the general vocabulary? sounds made up to me… OTOH i have heard of purging which, alas, is actually real (well… supposedly))
It appears that the only part of Watson’s body not prone to injury is his mouth which is surprising seeing he always has a foot in it.
Then we also have the towering intellect of Warner who is now accusing the Proteas of cheating i.e. scuffing the ball and especially de Villiers being the guilty party. Now, if you were the OZ captain, who would you not want to motivate in the SA side? Possibly Steyn and de Villiers.
At least Warner scores runs and shows considerable guts – both physically and mentally.
God help us at Newlands.