South Africa 309 and 351
England 315 and 294
SA won by 51 runs and win series 2-0
Stuart Hess
LONDON: “I’m still thinking it’s stuck in my left hand. That was the moment for me, these three fingers managed to hang on to Matt Prior, who was playing unbelievably well,” Graeme Smith quipped last night, holding out his left hand, as the magnitude of South Africa’s achievement began to sink in.
The Proteas, as they did four years ago, beat England in a Test series, but only after the home side had put up an enormous fight.
This had been a tightly contested Test, the momentum swinging one way and then another. Both teams were 54/4, and after the respective first innings had been completed, England’s lead was negligible.
South Africa appeared to have taken a significant advantage, first on the back of Hashim Amla’s magnificently constructed century and then the dismissal of England’s openers by Vernon Philander on Sunday evening.
However, there was no way it would be a mere procession to the mace, handed to the No 1 Test team, for the tourists.
England have not climbed to the summit of Test cricket by chance. They have some excellent players and, in Andy Flower, a coach who is by nature a fighter and would demand that characteristic from his team.
And so they fought yesterday. An initial wobble in which they lost Ian Bell to Philander, and then James Taylor to a ridiculous run out, was put aside as Jonathan Trott and the impressive Jonny Bairstow (Kevin who?) put on 88 for the fifth wicket in 17 overs.
Trott, so wild in the early part of the day, was able to play a more composed innings, for it was Bairstow who took the attack to the Proteas with some clinical hitting that suggests a KP-less future may not be so bad for England.
However, it was Prior who really frightened the Proteas. He had started quietly – following Bairstow’s dimissal to a breathtaking catch by Kallis at second slip – realising there was still sufficient time and counting on a tired South African attack against which he reckoned he could score.
“Naturally, there was concern there. They were hitting reverse sweeps out of the rough,” said Smith. “I must give Matt Prior credit, he’s been a top performer in this series, and when we’ve had opportunities to get through England, he’s been that pillar at number seven, and he was that again today.”
Prior and Stuart Broad shared a partnership of 62 for the seventh wicket until Broad hit Kallis to Hashim Amla at deep backward square leg – and then inexplicably hung around, hoping the umpires might find something wrong with the dismissal – before an eighth-wicket stand with Graeme Swann turned the final day tense.
Imran Tahir bowling around the wicket into some severe rough was smashed over the legside, before those audacious reverse sweeps were employed.
Swann was run out attempting a desperate single – thanks to excellent work by Tahir – and the game appeared to be over when Prior was caught by JP Duminy running around the cover boundary.
But with Prior just metres from the pavilion and with a number of coaches and teammates on the balcony screaming at him, television replays showed Morné Morkel had over-stepped the front line – just.
“That was the period when I started panicking a little bit – when the no-ball wicket came,” Man-of-the-Match Vernon Philander admitted afterwards.
However, the new ball, Smith knew – as did everyone else – would prove crucial, and it did. Prior, after a gritty 73, edged the fourth ball of Philander’s over to Smith at first slip, before Kallis hung on to his fourth catch of the match to end proceedings.
“I certainly felt we deserved to win the series with the way we’ve played, but that’s not how sport works. You need to go and earn it, but the way that it finished was the perfect finish for us,” said Smith.
“The biggest thing for us is to learn to win when things are tough, when we are not always ahead of the game. In this Test, we had to win tough. We batted first, when it was really good bowling conditions.
‘Then we had England in trouble, and they fought back. And often that third innings, to set up a game, to set up a victory, can be the most pressurised. We did what we needed to do there ... and then it stuck, and it’s a wonderful feeling.”