Namaste India, g’day Australia

South Africa have performed like a 4x4 thrust rudely into reverse from the third test against India.

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

THAT Steve Smith doesn’t give a lot away is an under-statement about the least Australian Aussie since Gough Whitlam, the famously liberal Labour prime minister of a country where the Liberal Party is a bunch of monstrous raving right-wing loonies.

Off the field Smith neither glows nor plunders, unlike others who come from a land Down Under. Instead he is a credit to his impeccable media training, that — and this is true of sport the world over — educates players and coaches in the grey art of saying as little as possible as politely as possible.

This week offered a prime example. Smith was asked how much it will mean to his team to keep intact Australia’s record of never having lost a test series in South Africa.

“It means a lot,” he said. “We got beat by South Africa at home a year ago and that was a low point for Australian cricket. It will be great of we can turn the tide here.”

Cut that for six.

In fairness, what else was Smith supposed to say? That a first ever South African win over Australia at home would sit pretty next to them retaining their unbeaten home record against India this season?

As if.

But a hairline chink in Smith’s otherwise impregnable mental armour did seem to open.

“For us as a team, winning away is a big goal. Like most teams around the world we don’t play well awa … well, every team around the world hasn’t played well away from home for a while.”

For a moment there was something there, wasn’t there? An acknowledgement that even the best media training couldn’t stop the truth from smacking you upside the head: played 14, won six, lost six.

That’s Australia’s record in test series on the road since 2010. They haven’t been successful on foreign soil since 2015-16, when they won in New Zealand. Even Bangladesh kept them at bay in a drawn series last year.

But, of Australia’s 11 home series since 2010, they’ve won eight and lost two — to England in 2010-11 and South Africa in 2016-17.

Smith’s point stands in relation to South Africa’s home record, which shows that they have won nine and lost two of the 13 series in their backyard since 2010.

But away since 2010 South Africa have lost two series and won eight. That might make them want to play this rubber somewhere else. Or at least not right here, right now considering they have performed like a 4x4 thrust rudely into reverse from the third test against India last month.

Even if South Africa had won the third T20 at Newlands on Saturday they could not have changed the fact that the Indians have made mortal opponents who, conventional wisdom had it, would decimate them in this country.

It’s been a puzzling decline for a team who struggled to compete after they won the first two tests, and which can’t be explained away by the injuries that took giants like Faf du Plessis, AB de Villiers, Quinton de Kock and Dale Steyn out of the equation.

South Africa went to Australia in 2016-17 without the holy trinity of Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher and lost Steyn to a broken shoulder early in the piece. And, of course, they won.

There is, then, an unusual amount of pressure on them to play like South Africa and not like the poor facsimile they have been in too many of their white-ball games against India.

Much of it comes from other South Africans, like this one: “Whether it’s football, rugby, cricket, athletics, netball, we want to have one over the Aussies. It’s like the Springboks playing against the All Blacks.”

That’s Farhaan Behardien, who as a white-ball specialist is unlikely to be given the chance to tangle with the Australians. Instead he will, like us, watch from distance.

“We just don’t want the Aussies to win,” he said.

Steve Smith would get that. Gough Whitlam? Maybe not.