Tense finish, but SA top of the world

Getty Images

SA celebrate with the ICC World Test mace after beating England at Lords yesterday. The 2-0 series victory gives the Proteas the coveted No 1 Test ranking.

‘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 SA’s achievement began to sink in.

As they did four years ago, SA beat England in a Test series, but only after the home side had put up an enormous fight.

This was a tightly contested match, 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.

SA appeared to have taken a significant advantage, first on the back of Hashim Amla’s magnificently constructed century, and then after the dismissals of England’s openers by Vernon Philander on Sunday evening.

However, there was no way it would be a mere procession to the mace for the tourists. England had 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 South Africans 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 South Africans. He had started quietly – following Bairstow’s dismissal to a breath-taking catch by Kallis at second slip – realising there was still sufficient time and counting on a tired SA attack against which he reckoned he could score.

“Naturally, there was concern there. They were hitting reverse sweeps out the rough.

“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 No 7, and he was that again today,” said Smith.

Prior and Stuart Broad shared a partnership of 62 for the seventh wicket until Broad hit Kallis to 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 leg-side 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 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 Morne Morkel had over-stepped – just – the frontline.

“That was the period when I started panicking a little bit – when the no-ball wicket came,” admitted man of the match Vernon Philander afterwards. However, Smith knew the new ball would prove crucial – and it did.

Prior, after a gritty 73, edged Philander’s fourth ball 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 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 pressured, we did what we needed to do there… and then it stuck, and it’s a wonderful feeling.”