All aboard the Karachi express

“I can’t predict the future. I wish I could.” - Dean Elgar

Telford Vice | Cape Town

EVEN from 8,320 kilometres away and through the hearsay of a television watched by untrained eyes, the truth that the Karachi pitch would rip and rag was self-evident. If there were rumours of grass they were exaggerated, and the turgid brownness of the strip invited comparisons with an African river. The kind bristling with crocodiles and hippos.

South Africans there in the flesh could see this for themselves. So their original XI included all three spinners in the squad: Keshav Maharaj, Tabraiz Shamsi and George Linde. The only other time in the 269 Tests South Africa have played since readmission in 1991 that they have picked as many frontline slow bowlers was in Visakhapatnam in October 2019, when India won by 203 runs regardless of the presence in their opponents’ attack of Maharaj, Dane Piedt and Senuran Muthusamy. But, minutes before the toss on Tuesday, Shamsi suffered a lower back spasm and his name had to be crossed off the team sheet. In an enforced change of tactics, Lungi Ngidi replaced him.

What did go right for the visitors was that Quinton de Kock called correctly. No-one would want to bat last on this surface. Bowlers’ footmarks materialised like puddles of problems before the match was two sessions old, and by stumps inconsistent bounce to go with the ever sharpening turn. And a touch of reverse swing.

There was also a stirring fightback from the South Africans that cost the home side four wickets and left them still 187 runs short of parity. Three of those strikes were the work of Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortjé, and by the look of things there will be a lot more success for fast bowlers where that came from. That’s if the spinners leave much for them to do. More certain is this: whatever you’re planning to do on Saturday, the scheduled last day, don’t bank on there being any cricket left to watch in this match. But we’re a long way from Saturday. After Tuesday, who’s on top?

“I’d say we are,” Dean Elgar told an online press conference. “After our first innings, I don’t think I would have said that. Them being [33/4] is something we would have bought overnight. We would have paid good money to have them four down for such a low score knowing that the pitch is going to become tougher for them to score on, and knowing that we have some very good spinners who can exploit that pitch.

“In saying that, the pitch is not playing badly. We didn’t bat particularly well. We know that we haven’t fulfilled our potential, especially considering the way we’ve prepared leading up to this Test. We’ve had some very good preparation but sometimes Test cricket can get the better of you and you get caught in the moment, and you have to respect that.”

Word from Pakistan was that the ball spun more on Tuesday, the opening day of the Test series, remember, than it did on the last day of any of the other 11 first-class matches played at the National Stadium this season, or since October. We don’t have to take the locals’ word for it. Teams were dismissed 25 times in those 11 games. Only in eight innings was the total lower than South Africa’s 220, and only in six did the dismissed side face fewer overs than their 69.2.

Just twice was a side bowled out on the first day in those games, and seamers took half the wickets in one innings and nine in the other. On Tuesday, Yasir Shah and Nauman Ali, a 34-year-old debutant left-arm spinner, claimed five between them and the South Africans graciously gifted their hosts two more in the form of runouts. Of the 14 wickets that fell on Tuesday, the quicks took six.

It is not meant as a slight on the Pakistanis’ performance to argue that the only South African who was removed by a delivery worthy of taking his wicket was Faf du Plessis, who could do little except edge a sniping leg break from Yasir to be caught behind. For the rest, either poor judgement or poor strokes — or both — did them in. Quinton de Kock was the chief offender. His lusty heave off Nauman would have looked like the shot of a dominant player had he not neglected to note an important detail: Imran Butt, another debutant, was perfectly positioned at mid-on to take the catch. “It was a very big wicket to get the captain out for my first Test wicket,” Nauman said.

All of South Africa’s top six reached double figures. But bar Elgar and his utterly Elgaresque 58 — all beast, no beauty — none of the rest made more than Du Plessis’ 23. Five of the first six pairs shared 30 or more runs, but only Elgar and Du Plessis and Temba Bavuma and George Linde put on more than 40. No two players stuck it out long enough together to add 50.

Those read as damning factors on a day that went wrong for the South Africans until the 17th ball of Pakistan’s reply, when Rabada hammered Abid Ali’s off-stump. Nine deliveries later a viciously rising effort from Rabada found Butt’s glove and he was caught at leg gully. Pakistan’s glee faded to grim grey when Babar Azam, in his first Test as captain, on his return from injury, and having to deal with the intense anticipation roused by those facts, was trapped in front by Maharaj with a darting rather than turning delivery that beat him for pace and would have hit leg stump. In came the imposing figure of Shaheen Afridi as a nightwatch — only to have his middle stump nailed by Nortjé with 11 balls left in the day’s play.

So much happened on Tuesday that it was difficult to say where we might be at stumps on Wednesday, much less anytime afterwards. That was as true in front of a television in Cape Town, some 8,320 kilometres away from the scene, as it was for Elgar and his experience of 114 Test innings, only one of them in Pakistan: “I can’t predict the future. I wish I could.”

First published by Cricbuzz.