New Zealand’s stunning series victory in India was not only their first in 13 attempts stretching back to 1955 but it has shaken up the race to the World Test Championship final with five teams in the running for a place in the June showpiece match at Lord’s in 2025
India and Australia were long-time favourites for a rematch of the last final but India’s losses to the Black Caps in the first two Tests has left them with a steep hill if not a mountain to climb while even Australia may face the prospect of having to win a two-Test series in Sri Lanka, a feat they have struggled to achieve in recent years.
New Zealand, Sri Lanka and SA now have their fate in their own hands and a purple patch of victories for any of them will put them in line for an appearance on the grandest Test stage of their careers. The complication is that all five teams play one of the others at some stage in the next three months.
Australia have the greatest room for manoeuvre with four victories required from their final seven matches in the cycle. India require four wins from their final six matches. The “problem”, of course, is that five Tests are against each other in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy beginning in November.
If India win a consolation victory against New Zealand in Mumbai later this week they will still have to beat Australia 3-2. If that happens, Australia will need to win 2-0 in Sri Lanka early in 2025. Both are as unlikely as each other but that is the only way they can meet in the final.
SA are now considered favourites ahead of India with four wins required from their final five Tests which includes the second Test against Bangladesh in Chattogram starting on Tuesday and two each against Sri Lanka and Pakistan in December and January.
Sri Lanka need to win three of their final four Tests against SA and Australia while New Zealand have an equally difficult task of winning their final four Tests and then hoping that a couple of other results go their way. Completing a 3-0 clean-sweep at the Wankhede Stadium would be an astonishing achievement in itself but beating England 3-0 at home in December will almost certainly be beyond them. The dispassionate and objective view is that Australia and SA are best placed for a week in London in 2025.
The more significant aspect is that the Test Championship, for all its ridiculous flaws and imperfections, is doing the job that had been hoped for. Five out of the nine teams have something tangible to aim for other than a bilateral series victory. And most important of all, Test cricket lovers around the world have reason to be invested in following it.
Two Proteas players may be particularly important at the spin-friendly Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium over the next five days: Kyle Verreynne and Dane Piedt.
Verreynne was a precocious talent from his early school days also excelling at soccer and hockey before focusing on cricket. He opened the batting and guarded his wicket with his life honing the unusual technique which has remained largely the same ever since, relying more on quick hands and a good eye rather than conventional foot movement.
But it was as a ’keeper that he really caught the eye standing up to everyone, including the opening bowlers, and regularly stunning the opposition boys with unexpected stumpings.
Life wasn’t easy or straightforward at home and his place at Wynberg Boys High School would not have been possible without a scholarship from the Jacques Kallis Foundation. Young Kyle made the very best of his chance and the school’s facilities.
His second Test century in Dhaka, in demanding conditions, has locked in his place for the foreseeable future and may just have quietened the Jukskei doubters who believed that Heinrich Klaasen was the better wicketkeeper/batsman and was forced into Test retirement by Shukri Conrad’s preference for the WP man.
Piedt has the perfect, phlegmatic personality to handle the most difficult and often thankless job in the game — apart from umpiring. He was the leading wicket-taker in provincial cricket in 2014 when he debuted against Zimbabwe in Harare claiming a match haul of 8/152.
Apart from a hard-earned 5/153 against England in Durban two years later there were few other highlights in his nine Tests across five years culminating in a savage thrashing at the hands of Rohit Sharma in 2019 which included innings figures of 1/107, 0/102 and 1/101. He conceded 20 sixes in the series, an unwelcome world record.
But instead of sulking and retreating back to domestic cricket he sought fresh adventure and, at the age of 29, signed up for Minor League Cricket in the US with what seemed like an optimistic promise of Major League Cricket to come. He ended his domestic career in SA with, apparently, absolutely no prospect of any further international appearances. How life changes!
On his return to the Test team he took another eight wickets for Conrad’s collection of “the forgotten, unwanted and leftover” against New Zealand and has subsequently played significant roles — with bat and ball — in the victories in Guyana and Dhaka. Any off-spinner who bowls a carrom ball is worth a second look, and a third look if their temperament and sense of humour are as resilient as Piedt’s.
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