Stark disparities separate SA and Zimbabwe

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Harare

For Hamilton Masakadza and Brendan Taylor, Zimbabwe’s last test series against SA, in March, 2005 will be too fresh for comfort when the teams clash in a one-off match in Harare on Saturday.

“At the team meeting before the first test at Newlands, I said, ‘Guys, Jacques Kallis is struggling with his inswinger, but he still has the one that goes the other way’,” Masakadza said yesterday.

The next day, Masakadza scratched his way to six off 37 balls. Then he shouldered arms to Kallis and was trapped plumb in front by a pearler of an inswinger.

Taylor survived 10 deliveries for his two, only to follow a wide delivery from Makhaya Ntini and gift Mark Boucher his 300th test dismissal.

“I was still wearing my helmet when I walked back into the dressingroom, and I hit myself so hard on the head with my bat that I was almost knocked out,” Taylor said.

By then, Ntini had already bowled Dion Ebrahim to reach 200 test wickets.

And so on and so forth. It took SA 31.2 overs and not much more than the first session of the match to dismiss Zimbabwe for 54, then their lowest ever total. Barely 24 hours later, the game ended in victory for SA by an innings and 21 runs.

Nine years on, some things have changed and others not. SA have bid farewell to Kallis, Boucher and Graeme Smith. The only Zimbabwe survivors from the Newlands nightmare are Masakadza, Taylor and Elton Chigumbura.

SA, who were then ranked fifth, have earned and re-earned the No. 1 test ranking. Zimbabwe were second from bottom. They still are.

After losing the second match of that series by an innings and 62 runs at Centurion, Zimbabwe played four more tests - losing all them by an innings - before suspending themselves from the format. The player walkout sparked by Heath Streak’s mysterious removal as captain had taken its toll.

Zimbabwe were out of test action from September, 2005 to August, 2011. In that time, SA played 55 tests. Since their return, Zimbabwe have played 10 tests. SA? Twenty-eight. In January, 2012, New Zealand lowered Zimbabwe’s lowest total to 51.

Those numbers capture the unfairness of test cricket’s lopsided reality. South Africans complain about the increasing occurrence of series of only two tests on their team’s itinerary. Just yesterday, Russell Domingo said on the SA squad’s arrival here: “We are yearning for more test matches. We’ve played two tests in the last four or five months. All countries are looking to play more test cricket.”

But, for Zimbabwe, a two-test series is almost always as good as it gets - 10 of their 93 tests have been one-off affairs, and they have played only five rubbers of three matches.

Taylor, who is in the 10th year of an international career that has spanned just 19 tests, will play his first three-test series against Bangladesh in October and November.

Yesterday, groundstaff at Harare Sports Club had still to decide where they would paint the creases on Saturday. Their choices are a brown surface located towards the eastern edge of the table or a more green strip two pitches closer to the middle.

The smart money, given the disparities that gape wide between the teams in every department, is on the browner, flatter, safer option.

But Hashim Amla would have no talk of triumph yesterday: “Whether you’re playing Australia or Zimbabwe, the pressure to win is always there. We are here to play our best brand of cricket.”

If that happens, SA could spend what would have been the last three days of the match fishing at Kariba.