The story of this game is easily told: two teams did their damndest to lose the game. It was touch and go for a while there, but finally, South Africa held on grimly and in the face of stiff competition from England, managed to seal the defeat they had snatched from the jaws of a certain win.
Time was when a captain who opened with spin would be greeted with oohs and admiring aahs.
Over time, that ploy has gone from 'surprise' to 'standard', so prima facie, Graeme Smith tossing the ball to Robin Peterson first up on a dry, dusty track that screamed 'slow turner' was nothing to get worked up about.
What makes it worth noting is history: ever since its return to international cricket, South Africa has played it strictly by the numbers. In this World Cup, the Proteas for once seem willing and able to think outside of that comfortable box, and the side looks all the more formidable for it.
The real highlight of the opening over of the England innings therefore not the fact of spin, but the aggressive field Smith set for it, with slips in place and, halfway through the first over, a silly point added on (While on that, it did seem a bit strange for the South African skipper to be demonstrating the sort of skill in handling spinners as an attacking weapon that has been missing from the likes of Kumar Sangakkara and MS Dhoni).
The master stroke lurked in the outfield. Andrew Strauss has been talking up his golf-derived big hitting prowess ever since that tie against India; against a left arm spinner, a left handed batsman looking to hit long was almost guaranteed to go on the on side. Smith had a long on in place for the first ball of the innings; more significantly, the fielder posted there was AB de Villiers, the brilliant leader of an outstanding fielding side.
It all came together perfectly: Strauss skipped a step down and launched into his golf drive before he had really gotten a feel for the lack of pace in the wicket; he put the ball up in the air towards deep mid on and AB, running in off the line, timed his headlong forward drive perfectly to hold a catch probably only he could have conceived, let alone executed. As if to underline just how much thought had gone into that, Smith promptly waved him back to his more usual position of cover point.
Getting Kevin Pietersen's wicket two balls later seemed equally inevitable, the right-hander has hard hands, which prescribes disaster on a slow pitch against a slow bowler with a new ball. Pietersen pushed, got the edge, and put slip in business.
Ian Bell, supposedly a good player of spin, skipped down the track, was deceived by a delivery the bowler held back and found that he was nowhere near the pitch of the ball, but pushed hard at it anyway. Petersen checked in the follow through, dived to his left and took a blinder with the width of a blade of grass between ball and turf. England was 15 for 3, and that was the game right there, everything that followed played to that script.
England seemed to be in some kind of mental warp, unable to adjust to conditions radically different from the 'hit through the line' track they played on in Bangalore. Or perhaps "unable" is the wrong word, they just didn't bother. The three top batsmen between them faced a mere 13 deliveries, clearly, assessing conditions was not part of their agenda.
It seemed a bit strange for Smith to take Peterson out after a spell of 4-2-4-3, and to bring pace at both ends shortly after, rotating between Steyn, Morkel and a somewhat wayward Kallis. And it could be argued that this strange step allowed Jonathan Trott and Ravi Bopara to settle down to a spell of nudging, nurdling accumulation. The possible explanation is that the Proteas captain wanted to get through some overs of seam, get the ball softened up a bit before putting his spinners back in play.
The two batsmen played in contrasting styles. Trott looks assured, as you would expect from someone in the midst of a fine vein of form; Bopara, in for Paul Collingwood, looked edgy in his running and calling and, against Morkel in particular, seemed to regularly lose track of his off stump, but showed sufficient nous to hang in there, suss out the conditions, and use soft hands to work the ball around.
What made the going doubly hard for the batsmen was the Proteas fielding. You'd have thought the Power Plays lasted for 50 overs, Smith consistently had five, six inside the ring, and with de Villiers leading the fielding effort, batsmen had to claw runs out of nowhere (After 11 overs, for instance, England managed just 13 singles against 49 dot balls).
If Smith had reckoned that his spinners would really come into play with the softer ball, he read it right. Bopara and Trott added 99 in 25.1 overs without ever looking dominant; just staying out there against a tight bowling attack and razor sharp fielding put enormous mental stress, and it showed in the way both batsmen left soon after their respective 50s. First was Trott, pushing hard at an Imran Tahir delivery that dipped on him and bounced; the bowler flung himself to his left to grab a return catch that was not quite in the Petersen class, but close.
Matt Prior seemed in the mood to take on the spinners; Smith brought back Morne Morkel and the quick struck with a delivery very tight on off stump ine that climbed to find the edge to van Wyk behind the stumps. The bowler provided his captain with a bonus immediately after when he jagged one in on the seam to trap Bopara in front; Smith immediately switched Steyn on at the other end and the fast bowler struck with a sizzling full length ball, first up, that nailed Tim Bresnan's pad in front of all three stumps.
That was it as far as any remaining England hopes were concerned, with Tahir running through the tail to end the innings on 171 in the 46th over. In an example of excellent handling of the richness and variety of the Proteas bowling attack, the three quick bowlers had a combined spell of 20 overs, 1 maiden, 67 runs and three wickets; the spinners combined for 25.4 overs, three maidens, 96 runs and 7 wickets. And there was a symmetry to the effort, Petersen took out the top three; the seamers accounted for the middle; Tahir had four including three of the last four.
England, which consistently talked up what a world class bowler Graeme Swann is, gave the ball to Yardy to open the bowling. Perhaps the thinking was, a left arm bowler worked for SA so maybe a left arm bowler will work for us too.
Not. Yardy, in each of his first two overs, made the twin errors of dropping it short and giving it width, and the Proteas with Hashim Amla in particularly ornery mood, raced off to the sort of start that makes an anti-climax of a short chase.
By the time Swann came on in the 7th over, Amla was in cruise mode while at the other end, Smith was clearly biding his time. And it began to look as though all South Africa had to do was walk the dog home from the park.
Smith went in the 15th over, defending tentatively to Swann and getting the faintest edge behind that the third umpire had to rule on. Amla went in the 18th, getting cute on Broad and trying to run him down to third man only to deflect the ball onto the stumps. But the score was 75 for two, Kallis had already started stroking the ball smooth as you like, and the dismissal of the openers looked like aberrations in a pre-scripted story.
Credit where due, England's bowling, especially after Broad and Swann teamed up, was far better than the ineffectual display against India and Ireland suggested was possible. Broad got swing and pace in the air and seam off the deck; Swann bowled very tight lines and got the ball to drift, turn and bounce. Trouble was, Strauss was forced to bowl Swann in a prolonged spell, by the 20th over, the spinner had already gone 7-1-25-1, and there was little left in the tank.
His exit, coupled with the fact that Yardy had already gone 5-0-30-0, seemed the opportune moment for South Africa to seal the deal, but incredibly, the Proteas chose that very moment to implode.
Kallis chased a wide one from Broad in the 19th to get the faintest edge; de Villiers, who wasn't a shadow of his normal free-stroking self, left one alone from Anderson just outside his off stump, and saw it jag back in and flick the top of off; full-fledged panic then set in, with the highly rated Faf du Plessis scampering down the track to Broad only to play the ball to short leg, from where the relay to the keeper found the batsman yards out of his crease; Petersen drove at a perfectly innocuous Yardy delivery outside off with the flattest of feet, and gave the bemused Prior another catch to complete.
It was funny, really, the batsmen nicked, Prior missed, the batsmen shrugged and nicked again till Prior, bored with dropping them and making glum faces, clutched on.
South Africa went from 124/3 in 31.5 overs to 127/7 in 36.6. How do you explain that, except to say that South African batsmen appear to have raised their ability to choke under pressure to a whole new level? The side has talent, actually, it has an embarrassment of riches in that area. But this display will likely confirm that it lacks 'bottle'; that for all its on-paper all-round skills, it is incredibly brittle.
Hell, the latter batsmen made Yardy look life-threatening, is how bad the Proteas batting was. And it stayed that way until Dale Steyn put things in perspective, smacking him and Kevin Pietersen around for fours. Pietersen, hernia and all, had been pressed into the attack to provide a better spinning option than Yardy, whose performance yet again leaves you wondering just what he is doing in this side. With the bat he is a good two notches out of his pay grade at #7; with the ball he is a sight for sore batsmen's eyes (okay, batsmen's sore eyes).
Steyn and van Wyk showed far more grit than their betters, handling both seam and spin effectively, if not prettily, until the Power Play effect struck, and van Wyk impossibly attempted a cut from off middle stump to chop the ball onto the timber, with 12 runs still to get off 22. Not to be outdone, Steyn greeted Broad with a forward defensive pad in front of the stumps; a single toTahir later, Morne Morkel seemed to say okay, if all those great batsmen can't do it, why should I bother, aimed an almighty heave at Broad, and gave Prior one last thing to do before joining the celebratory huddle as England pulled off the unlikeliest of wins, by six runs.
On balance, a game that had the potential to be a cracker turned into one big yawn. South Africa impressed with the ball and in the field; with the bat, they were a shambles. England was ordinary with the bat and, got just about passing grades in the field if you were feeling generous, and barring Swann and Broad, had nothing to boast about with the ball.
Ramesh Srivats (@rameshsrivats) put it best when, on Twitter, he said, "The problem with keeping the minnows out of the World Cup is, you don't know who the minnows really are." Today, it looked like two minnows were locked in competition out there for the wooden spoon.
By Prem Panicker