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Business News/ Opinion / The greatest Test?
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The greatest Test?

The draw in the first match between India and South Africa is proof that Test cricket rocks

India’s Virat Kohli (left) celebrates with bowler Mohammad Shami (second from left) for bowling out South Africa’s batsman Jean-Paul Duminy (right) at Wanderers stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Sunday. Photo: AP Premium
India’s Virat Kohli (left) celebrates with bowler Mohammad Shami (second from left) for bowling out South Africa’s batsman Jean-Paul Duminy (right) at Wanderers stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Sunday. Photo: AP

The fourth delivery of Mohammad Shami’s 23rd over in the fourth innings of the India-South Africa Test match (the 125th Indian over) was a straight fast one on the stumps. J.P. (Jean-Paul, if you ever wondered) Duminy goes for a cover drive, gets a thick inside edge, and is bowled. At the other end is F. (Francois) du Plessis, who has now been at the crease for about seven hours, and is on 123 off 288 deliveries. South Africa need to score 51 off 62 balls to win the match. They are six wickets down, but perhaps effectively seven, because Morne Morkel is injured, and though he is right then being told to pad up, his team wouldn’t like to stress his ankle unless absolutely necessary.

It was a draw.

The batting team decided to play for a draw. And so it was. It was a draw. Eight runs left to be scored, three wickets in hand. Desist. Leave the deliveries. Keep your wicket. Draw.

Could there be any greater proof that Test cricket rocks? Yes, it ended in a draw, but remember. Remember that Test cricket is the only form of the game that allows a draw and—let me emphasise this—an honourable draw. Batsmen are celebrated for innings they played that forced a draw—or to put it another, emotionally better, way—SAVED a match.

We’ll come back to du Plessis a bit later. Fafa.

Let’s just look at this Test for a while. Cricket has its mad fans, and they will be a miniscule percentage of soccer’s mad fans. Fans of Test cricket? Give me a few more decimal points please. But let me make a totally un-empirical non-statistics-based statement, what the hell. The percentage of Test cricket fans who enjoy a game no matter who wins—that includes your homeland and nation and the guys you were convinced into buying certain brands of cement and went to donate to the blood bank—ah yes, the percentage of Test cricket fans who enjoy a game no matter who wins is significantly higher than the comparable slice of a population which watches soccer or Naach Baliye or whatever they watch, and get their rocks off on.

This Test match that ended, in Johannesburg—and the eventual result became evident three overs before it was all over—was one of the most thrilling matches ever. Now, think about this carefully: this is a sports event that lasts five days. A standard space shuttle goes around the earth about 150 times in that time. And everyone has bitten through the nails on their fingers and the toes are protesting, and—the beauty of it—no team would win!

I’ll come back to du Plessis. Give me a moment, or 10 minutes.

In The Final Test, the only feature film ever made totally on the cricket theme, an American comes to watch an Ashes Test and Lord’s and is horrified to hear his neighbour in the stands say that he hope it rains and there’s no play, so England saves the match.

All games are unfair at a certain a level, and at a certain level of competition, the sportsmen try to take as much of an advantage of the chinks they see in the rules. So, in Word Cup soccer, you have players rolling around the ground like they are filmed by Quentin Tarantino, when someone’s jersey brushed their shorts. In the 2006 soccer World Cup quarter final match between England and Portugal, Cristiano Ronaldo feigned a ghastly foul and got Wayne Rooney red-carded, and was caught on camera as Rooney went off wondering deep existential thoughts. Of course, they both played for Manchester United.

We have just seen a Test match that had two great sides, both playing to their capacity, that went into the last half hour of 30 hours with every option open. India played South Africa. No one who was playing for India had played more than 30 Tests, other than the captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Zaheer Khan. Dhoni—for good or worse—finally had the team that he could dominate, command, bend to his will. I cannot think of any Indian cricketer who underperformed. Everyone gave 100%.

Neither did the South Africans. Strange things happened. Rohit Sharma was bowled in the third inning by a delivery that just hit a crack and stayed low. It was a freak dismissal, as was Hashim Aamla’s—even more than Sharma’s. Jacques Kallis was given out wrongly in the fourth innings. South Africa was playing a bowler short—and certainly one of their two most effective bowlers! That’s how it is—a gladiatorial contest that rose to its highest potential—where all those qualities are called on—grit, aggression, determination, etc etc, fill in the blanks… I know it when I see it.

I’m coming back to du Plessis.

Ah, yes. Yes. He played one of the great innings in Test cricket, right? (Please notice, I am not saying ‘one of the greatest innings’, let’s have a high benchmark, OK?). Now, he came in at five down in the first innings and scored 20 off 77 balls, and was the second-last man out. He has played only eight Test matches, and in the very first Test he played, he was up against odds that Frodo Baggins would have considered reasonable. South Africa, at Adelaide in 2012, had to score 450 to win the Test with one and a half day to bat through. Du Plessis batted for eight and was 110 not out and saved the match. South Africa’s captain Graeme Smith sent du Plessis out on the evening of the fourth day of the match when his team was two down and a hell of a lot to score to win and a hell of a lot of time to spend on the pitch to save the match. And almost got them there. I would have gone out into the dark to buy fireworks if he had managed to be there till the end and win it for South Africa.

But it was not to be. Fafa du Plessis delivered, and then he was run out after a magnificent innings, when there were only 18 runs to make and 21 balls to go. And then Graeme Smith asked South Africa to close the shutters down, They were not going to lose. They would live another day. They are the No 1 team in ICC Test cricket rankings. Save that ranking,

Is that opting out? Let’s break it down to two parts. The individual and the team. The context is the Test match. Batting in a Test match, on a non-placid wicket, when there are quality fast bowlers bowling at you, comes down to two things. One, know where your off-stump is. Two, how to let the ball go. This entire Test match, played at Johannesburg, has been about how to let the ball go. And both teams have played superbly. If you were bored by Cheteshwar Pujara, know that he scored 96 runs between tea and end of play on the third day. Very few people have done that in Test history.

Graeme Smith and South Africa opted for a draw. Three overs and 24 runs to make, they made a decision. We must respect that.

If they won, they could have created a record, an astonishing and magnificent one. I can understand the decision Smith and the managers took, when three overs were left and du Plessis was out, asking their remaining batsmen to just play it out, and they would maintain their No 1 position in ICC Test rankings, and live to fight another day. Is that a nice way to remain No 1? But can I agree with it?

Here’s Graeme Smith, after the match (edited): “I thought Faf and AB’s knocks would go down as the best in all time. You gotta back the guys’ decision out there. the run out was unfortunate, the win would have been incredible, but we’ve still done very well to take it this far. You have to be level headed and there is always another coming up and as test team we’ve done that well in the last few years and make sure we never lose the game."

Not lose the game. Yes.

I’m coming back to du Plessis.

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Published: 23 Dec 2013, 01:31 PM IST
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