By GGM
December 14 2002

The toss proved to be the crucial actor as South Africa beat Pakistan by 62 runs in the 3rd one-dayer. The bowling departments of both teams seem much stronger than the batting, especially on seamer friendly wickets. ‘A game of two halves’ is an often stated sentiment in Football. Today it was more a case of a pitch of two halves. In the first innings, it was passive, benign and dormant. Under lights, it underwent a metamorphic change. It became as malicious, spiteful pitch, a seam bowlers dream which S.A exploited brilliantly. In this respect, Pakistan can consider themselves very unfortunate.

Notwithstanding, that the Pakistani team were unlucky, the batsman too often were shown to have defective defensive techniques. The key, to playing the seaming ball is to play it late, and to move the feet well, which should help in minimising the gap between pad and bat. Pakistani batsman could not abide by the basics. Afridi stuck in his crease obligingly hung his bat outside off stump at a wide delivery playing away from his body. Elahi was stuck on the crease, and pushed out with hard hands, at a delivery well away from his body. He has to tighten up if he is to be successful at Test cricket. Razzaq was the third batsman to have seemingly his feet glued to the pitch as he too could not get them moving. Moreover he committed the sin of playing a defensive shot with an angled bat, which a sure fire way of getting out caught behind. Younis and Latif did get their feet moving, but selected the incorrect deliveries to attack. Inzi was unfortunate, but it was a loose wave at a wide delivery early in the innings.

Admittedly 11 individuals with near perfect techniques would have struggled to cope with the exigent conditions, early on, so one must have a degree of sympathy with the batsman.

In sum, the toss was vital, with Pakistan batting when the conditions were much more taxing for the batsman, but, still, there were too many worrying indications technical fallibility.