For a moment at Eden Park, you could hear a flour bomb drop ...

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Auckland

IT was a rockslide down a rollercoaster, the inside of a jet engine somewhere over the Tasman, a dinosaur’s gut digesting last week’s dinner victim. It was the sound of Eden Park on Tuesday, and it was not pretty.

Who knew that a species of human as demure as the common Kiwi could reach so deep into the soul and pull up, roots and all, a noise nasty enough to make the Haka sound like ring-a-ring-o’roses?

“This is like a rugby crowd and this is what the Black Caps need,” said an uncommon Kiwi, Richard Hadlee, when he was interviewed on the stadium video public address system. That, of course, brought forth a self-satisfied roar - which drowned out the interviewer’s next question. Hadlee could only answer, “I’m sorry ... ?”

Still, you could have heard a flour bomb drop when AB de Villiers won the toss, even though that left plenty of opportunity for the crowd to deafen all within earshot.

Sharp fielding was punctuated by a roar usually reserved for the fall of a wicket, which in turn brought forth a sonic boom of approval.

But it cut both ways. “Forty-thousand people can do that to you,” was how Trent Boult explained the four chances New Zealand squandered.

Not often is a talent as rich and rare as De Villiers booed when he skips across the boundary to start his innings. He was on Tuesday, albeit by a muffled minority but despite the scoreboard proclaiming prominently that “Eden Park has zero tolerance for poor behaviour”.

Conversely, the mere emergence of the New Zealanders after a rain delay swelled the sky with sound and chased the clouds away.

When an appeal went up after Faf du Plessis flapped at a legside delivery, thousands of throats widened in support. When Ian Gould said not out, fury filled the air. When the big screen showed Du Plessis had, in fact, got a touch, the roof rocked and rolled. When Gould put his finger up, you knew what the Coliseum sounded like back when the lions lusted and the Christians cowered.

When the New Zealanders ran runs, rabble was roused. When they hit boundaries, the good people of Christchurch more than 1000 kilometres away on the other island might have wondered whether another earthquake was upon them.

But Kiwis are canny, and as their superiority faded to parity so their volume dipped. SA sport’s cheesy-cheerleader-in-chief, Fikile Mbalula, could hear the truth and tweeted: “Stadium is quite quiet, as if they are watching golf.”

From Mbalula’s typing fingers to the bat of Grant Elliott, who teed off and smashed the six that won it for New Zealand.

And then there was no shutting them up. The din was as loud as it was persistent, and it will ring in the hearts and minds of 11 beaten South Africans forever.