In examinations of the spirit like the Wanderers test, Dean Elgar is a champion.
Times Select
TELFORD VICE in Cape Town
SO, grandpa, what will you count as the best memory of your international cricket career?
“We lost in four days on a pitch we had asked for. I almost got my head taken off, which nearly led to the game being called off.
“Believe me, it doesn’t get better than that. Damn straight.”
Dean Elgar’s unborn grandkids would be forgiven for thinking the old bloke has lost it when, decades from today, he tells them that story.
If some of us who were there to see it happen are still around when he does, we should back him up.
Elgar versus India on a Wanderers pitch that, for three days, played like a jilted lover and, on the other, like a dead marriage, was in the purest sense what literature does at night: drama.
And, of all the actors in this cast, only Elgar could have played the starring role as unforgettably.
The man is a curmudgeon-in-training, a player who seeks out the worst case scenario and then makes himself at home there.
He could moan about a sunny day. Or about having too much money. Or a night out being too good.
But that also means that, in examinations of the spirit like the Wanderers test, he is a champion.
What we’ll remember, years from now, most clearly about this series won’t be Vernon Philander’s 6/42 or Hardik Pandya’s 93 at Newlands, or Virat Kohli’s 153 or Lungi Ngidi’s 6/39 in Centurion.
Instead, we’ll look at each other in wonder, still, at the unshakeable courage of a squat left-hander from Welkom who, by his own admission, doesn’t have the talent of others, but who found a way to bat — at the bloody Wanderers — for almost six hours for his undefeated 86.
And that after being hit in the head twice and who knows how many times on the hands.
And against a team surging towards a victory they could smell for hours; a team led by a screeching pantomime villain in Kohli, who is exactly the type of opponent to bring out the best in players like Elgar.
And watching from the other end as South Africa, who were 117 runs away from winning with nine wickets standing, lost those nine wickets for 53 to crash to a stunning defeat.
And all that in a game that, if we consider it dispassionately, didn’t matter as South Africa had won the series before it started.
Good luck trying to get Elgar to dis his passion. It’s all he has, and it’s more than enough.
When the eighth of those nine wickets went down, when Mohammed Shami’s yorker made Morne Morkel look even sillier than he usually does with a bat in his hands, Elgar seemed to give up the ghost of the game.
He jerked leftward and parallel to the crease at the non-striker’s end for a few steps, and almost tossed away the gloves he held in his hands.
Everything about Elgar’s reaction said, “Fuck sakes. It’s over.”
Then he steadied himself, regrouped, and faced 16 more balls — in which he hit Bhuvneshwar Kumar for four and six in the space of half-an-over — before Ngidi’s plucky cameo was ended to decide the issue.
So it smacked of spitefulness and stupidity that Elgar should abused on social media by Indian supporters who tried to claim that he had feigned injury after being hit flush on the grille of his helmet by a short delivery from Jasprit Bumrah on Friday evening — which caused play to be suspended.
Happily, many other Indian fans saw Elgar’s bravery for what it was, and said so.
At least one of them even knew what he was talking about.
“As true lovers of the game, let’s also take a moment and applaud the grit and determination displayed by Dean Elgar,” VVS Laxman tweeted.
“He waged a lone battle as the Indian pacers were too good for rest of the South African side.”
Elgar is the first South African to carry his bat twice in tests. Only one player in all the game has done it three times, and he had more talent than most: Desmond Haynes.
It was that kind of match and that kind of series.
For the first time in a three-game rubber all 120 available wickets were taken.
South Africa became, in Johannesburg, the third team to lose a test despite having had more than 100 runs on the board with only one wicket down in search of a target of less than 250.
The Wanderers, despite its reputation as a place where batsmen who aren’t used to pacy pitches should fear to tread, is now India’s happiest hunting ground anywhere outside of India among current venues.
After two wins and three draws, they have yet to lose a match there — which makes them the only visiting team South Africa have not beaten at the Bullring.
India also never lost at the Bourda in Georgetown, Guyana, where they played six times. But that grand old ground hosted its last test, against South Africa, in 2005.
The even bigger picture is that South Africa have wasted their chance to reclaim the No. 1 ranking.
Had they beaten India 3-0, a 2-0 or 3-1 win over Australia would have put them back on top, where they last were in January 2016.
Yes, the Aussies. They’re coming. In March to play four tests.
Best South Africa do not continue the folly of demanding groundsmen produce extreme pitches, a disingenuous approach that cost them dearly at the Wanderers.
Do it again and watch Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins smile, strike, and celebrate.
But, if that happens, at least South Africa — and the rest of us South Africans — will still have Elgar. Damn straight.
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