While Dewald Brevis was blasting 41 from just 17 balls to consolidate a commanding five-wicket victory for SA in their opening T20 International against Zimbabwe at Harare Sports Club on Monday his five sixes seemed, somehow, routinely ho-hum compared to the drama of the Test match taking place at Lord’s where the scoring rate on the final day was less than two runs per over.
They were both international contests but the contrast in tempo and tension could not have been greater. After three days of attritional cricket England and India could not be separated on first innings with both teams finishing on 387, only the ninth time in Test history scores have been identical.
India hit back again by dismissing the hosts for only 192 on day four and looked set for victory and a 2-1 lead in the five-match series when they coasted to 41/1 with half an hour of the penultimate day remaining, but there was plenty of time for another twist and they finished on 58/4 with 135 more required on Monday with six wickets remaining.
They limped to lunch on 112/8 and, again, the Test match looked over. But Test matches can behave like torpid fish in the dried mud of a barren lake, still alive even when all around them seems dead. There was still a pulse, and while Ravindra Jadeja was still at the crease, the faintest of heartbeats.
The 36-year-old veteran blocked and left the ball in the company of No 10 Jasprit Bumrah and last man Mohammed Siraj, collecting the single offered by a field spread far and wide with England captain Ben Stokes content to bowl just two balls on target at the tail-enders, convinced that two mistakes would be made well within the target. There were, after all, still 81 runs required at lunch.
Bumrah survived 52 balls before his restraint broke and he spliced a catch to mid-on having scored just five out of 35 runs during his stay at the crease. Surely, that was it. Last-man Siraj couldn’t continue the fight, could he? He could, and he did, facing 30 balls for his four runs before defending a regulation delivery from off-spinner Shoaib Bashir which slithered off his bat into the broken ground beneath his feet and spun back onto his stumps with just enough pace to topple a bail.
Jadeja was left unbeaten on 61 having faced an epic 181 balls but his heroics went unrewarded. Siraj was an inconsolable, crumpled heap at the crease though half a dozen England players, led by the man with whom he had exchanged ferocious words a day earlier, opener Zak Crawley, did try by proffering an arm around his slumped shoulders.
Stokes bowled 20 overs in the day in two back-breaking spells on 10 each which left him with blood visibly seeping through his boots from the broken skin on his toes. It was for that rather than scores of 44 and 33, or his five wickets in the match, he was named player of the match.
SA’s T20 Tri-Series in Zimbabwe which also involves New Zealand will no doubt produce some exciting moments and, as always seems to happen, at least one upset victory for the host nation before they fail to reach the final. The subplot is that it is Rob Walter’s first assignment as Black Caps’ head coach after resigning as the Proteas’ white-ball coach. Cricket, and sport, has a way with irony.
The vast diversity of form and format offered by cricket isn’t offered by other sports. Imagine playing seven hours a day for five straight days and losing by an amount of runs, 22, routinely scored in one over in the shortest format.
The Proteas are, of course, the world champions in the longest, greatest format so they will have appreciated the effort and intensity at Lord’s, scene of their own triumph last month. Just a shame they are still 15 months away from playing their next Test match on home soil.
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