The bowler’s Holding, the spinner’s surprised

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Newlands

SIMON Harmer is broad-shouldered, tigerishly competitive and blond. Michael Holding is tall, deeply intimidating and dark. Holding whispered death fast and furious. Harmer kills softly with slow poison.

Despite those apparently irreconcilable differences, it was former West Indies fast bowler Holding who handed Warriors off-spinner Harmer his test cap in the SA team’s huddle before the start of the third test at Newlands on Friday.

But that was not as incongruous as it seemed. “Everyone laughed when I told him that I started as an off-spinner but then I graduated to become a fast bowler,” Holding said.

Harmer was still smiling at stumps: his 3/67 helped SA limit the visitors to 276/6.

“If someone told me 10 days ago I’d be here, I probably would have slapped them,” he said.

It took Holding two tests and 366 deliveries to claim his first wicket. Harmer’s 24th ball - the last delivery before lunch - straightened and kissed the very top of Devon Smith’s middle stump.

“I can’t say I was nervous until Hashim (Amla) said, ‘You’re bowling our next over’,” Harmer said. “I just hoped the ball would go in the right direction.”

Fifteen deliveries after his maiden strike, Harmer celebrated again when a flatter effort skidded into the pads of Leon Johnson to end his enterprising innings at 54.

Harmer speared the first ball after tea down Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s leg side. The veteran’s unorthodox, open stance did him no favours: he tried to change his positioning to play the ball, but he was unable to stop his momentum from taking him too far towards the off-side without losing his balance. When he all but tipped over, AB de Villiers had the bails off quickly and conclusively enough for Chanderpaul to turn on his heel and walk.

That reduced the Windies to 172/5, a scoreline Denesh Ramdin would not have wanted to see when - for the third time in the series - he won the toss. This time he did not opt to shield his batsman from the best attack in the game armed with a new ball and a fresh pitch. Or so his decisions to field first seemed at Centurion and at St George’s Park.

The St George’s Park test was Steyn’s 77th, and for just the second time he went wicketless. He snapped out of it on the cusp of the first hour on Friday when Kraigg Brathwaite chunked more than edged a catch low to gully, where Dean Elgar snaffled smartly.

Harmer snuffed out half-century partnerships when he dealt Smith and then Johnson, while getting rid of Samuels took some strangeness.

The first oddity was Amla entrusting the fifth over before tea to Van Zyl. Then Marlon Samuels, who made a hundred in the second test, carved Van Zyl’s first and utterly friendly delivery - the 70th he faced - straight into the hands of Faf du Plessis at cover.

After tea, Jermaine Blackwood and Ramdin stalled SA’s progress for 29.1 overs with a stand that grew to 94 before Ramdin plopped the second new ball back to Steyn to go for 53. That took Steyn to 391 wickets, or past past Makhaya Ntini as SA’s third-most successful test bowler.

The selection of Harmer, who replaced leg spinner Imran Tahir, means SA have handed a player his first cap in their last four tests. Dane Piedt took his bow against Zimbabwe in Harare in August, while Stiaan van Zyl and Temba Bavuma did so in this series.

“I had a feeling I wasn’t going to play,” Harmer said. “I always expect the worst.”

As debuts go, Harmer can already consider his a success. As he said with some relief after the close, “I didn’t want to sit here having taken none for plenty.”

However, it is only a beginning - Holding took 248 wickets after claiming his first scalp and he bowled another 12 314 deliveries. Would he have preferred wickets in his first test?

“It was the best way to start,” Holding said. “If you are too successful the first time out, the only way to go is down. I could only go up.”