Sunday Times
TELFORD VICE, St George’s Park
SIXTEEN giant faces glowered at the falling rain from the side of SA’s team bus on Saturday. Their grim, bristled mugs, sweaty and swarthy as if rudely hauled up from a coal mine, comprised a larger than life photograph of the one-day squad.
Even in the midst of a series in the premier format at the ground where SA played the first of their 389 tests almost 126 years ago, there was no escaping the looming World Cup.
That said, while the West Indians are charming, stylish, and rarely without a smile, they have not been competitive. So far, this has been less a test series than a testing series for those who hoped to see a contest.
Besides, a day’s play shrunk to just 36 deliveries - in which SA reached 289/3 - by showers that shrouded the scene half-an-hour after the delayed start of noon was never going to hold the imagination.
And especially not after SA had added Friday’s domination to the less than nine sessions they needed to thrash the visitors by an innings at Centurion.
West Indies could not have bowled much more poorly than they did in the first test, so their improvement in that department has been marked at St George’s Park. But only their consistency of line and length has been better - their penetration was as lacking as it was at Centurion, and was not helped by the two dropped catches, missed stumping and two botched runouts they inflicted on themselves.
So, there was not much tension to be felt when Jerome Taylor delivered the first ball of the day, a legside gift that Faf du Plessis whipped to the square boundary for four.
With that, Du Plessis raised his bat to celebrate a fourth test century, an innings 229 balls in the making. It ended with the 230th, a length delivery that swerved away from the right-hander through the air and kept going after pitching to sucker him into playing down the wrong line and so to steer an edge into Denesh Ramdin’s gloves. Also fooled was umpire Paul Reiffel, who needed the snickometer’s help to get the decision right at the second attempt.
“I struggled for most of my innings,” Du Plessis said. “Every second ball I hit, I didn’t feel like I was hitting it in the middle. You know you have to grind when you come here. You know it’s not going to be pretty.”
Indeed. It had taken the Windies 571 balls to claim three of SA’s wickets. At Centurion, SA needed 625 deliveries to bowl them out - twice.
Who would be the last man any attack would want to see walking to the wicket after they had put up with the resolute Du Plessis for five-and-a-half hours? The hyperactive AB de Villiers, of course. He duly took a snappy single to point off the first ball he faced.
Three overs later, De Villiers drove Jason Holder handsomely for four through mid-off and, in Holder’s next over, down the ground for another boundary. They were strokes that told the Windies there was plenty more where that came from - more batting, more runs, more time in the field, more being dominated.
But only one more ball was bowled before the rain came, chasing the crowd to the covered regions of the stands of the most endearingly cobbled together ground in all of cricket, then to the pancake and coffee stalls and the pubs, and then - some hours later - home.
Long afterwards, the sky brightened enough to allow a committed few, some decked out in whites, one on crutches, to play their own game on a grass bank yonder. They did not see the umpires skulk to the middle for another inspection.
A game of dressingroom cricket involved Russell Domingo. “His batting needs help,” Du Plessis said, along with, “On days like this you eat too much, so our trainer won’t be happy.”
But, for young men deprived of their wireless devices, Saturday was mostly about being bored: “I wish there was something better to do than just sit around.”
If you were playing for the Windies, you might have disagreed.
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