Metaphorically speaking, the fingertips of Evan Flint are all over the pitch for the first Test between South Africa and Sri Lanka. He is responsible for the zestful greentops at Wanderers, and oversaw the track being prepared by Wonderboy Khanyile, the successor of Durban’s long-serving curator Wilson Ngobese.
An educated guess would be that Flint supervised Khanyile because the Kingsmead ground staff is in transition. More importantly, both captain Temba Bavuma and coach Shukri Conrad decided against maximising home advantage by leaving too much grass on the strip and instead wanted ‘fair surfaces’ whereas Dolphins, the local team, prefer it lower and slower. Bringing Flint on board must be an attempt to ensure Khanyile’s muscle memory does not take over because in that event Sri Lanka’s talented spinners come to the party.
So did the hypothetical confluence of these soil technologists work? Were they able to create in conjunction a pitch that denoted a middle-ground between their respective knowledge domains? Well, the initial results have been rather lopsided. The swing in the first ten overs of South Africa’s innings was the most among the same phase in a Test in the rainbow nation across ball-tracking database. There is a solitary instance of a bowler getting the ball to deviate more in the air in this phase than what Asitha Fernando managed – Dale Steyn versus West Indies in January 2008. Having won an important toss, Sri Lanka reduced South Africa to 14/2 and later 54/4.
The scorelines might suggest that but the islanders weren’t hot off the blocks. Asitha and left-armer Vishwa Fernando were both shaping the ball away, albeit their lines were too wide for their first overs to be marked by any sort of perniciousness. Aiden Markram threaded the extensive gap between mid-off and point twice in a row, first with a cold-blooded stab and then through an elegant backfoot punch. Reluctant to let the sweet timer of the ball glissade into a strokeplaying groove, Dhananjaya de Silva plucked out the third slip to reinforce the off-side ring.
De Zorzi offered judgement to five consecutive balls before Vishwa shifted his radar close to the stumps, immediately drawing a miscue as the ball skirted off the outside edge to the boundary. It was a belated realization in the context of that over but a prompt one as far as the limited action on the opening day was concerned. Make the batters play, for the edge is hard to find if the cherry is dangled outside the realm of temptation, commonly known as the corridor of uncertainty in cricketing parlance.
The Fernandos are quick learners. Moving inward towards the fifth-stump channel, Asitha and Vishwa had Markram and de Zorzi feeling for the away-curlers respectively. Poking with hard hands was a gaffe Temba Bavuma was adamant not to commit, and even though he was covering the movement remarkably the odd lapse is inevitable when the ball is hooping around corners. Moreover, Vishwa was bowling over the wicket to right-handers Tristan Stubbs and Bavuma. His ability to tail the ball back in which produced a few close lbw shaves was playing on Bavuma’s mind.
Thankfully for the captain, beginner’s luck blessed him on return to Test cricket after three months. Having nicked one that held its line and went on with the angle, Bavuma was not only put down on 1 by Dimuth Karunaratne at second slip but also caught behind off a no-ball on 20 attempting a wild hook as Lahiru Kumara bowling a bouncer out of the blue threw him off his demure game plan. He has just two centuries to his name in 101 Test innings so South Africa will hope that he takes full advantage of his charmed life hitherto.
An alliance worth 32(72) between Stubbs and Bavuma seemed to have taken the sting out of the contest after South Africa lost their openers in a matter of three balls and the rays of hope, literally and figuratively, were peeking out as the players hydrated themselves at the end of an opening hour Sri Lanka bossed. However, the serenity was short-lived. Soon, the skies turned caliginous, forcing the floodlights on as third seamer Lahiru, all rhythm, grace and harmony, made the ball talk. His first over may have yielded 17 runs but only one of those four boundaries had a convincing aura to it. Clocking over 140kmph, he extracted lateral movement and a hint of bounce from the pitch to trample over all the hard work Stubbs had done to play himself in under louring conditions. Much to his relief, Karunaratne redeemed himself in the cordon, the ball slipping through his hands this time around as well before the thighs spared him the blushes.
While the delivery to Stubbs nipped away, Lahiru shattered all the confidence David Bedingham had acquired with a rasping square drive by breaching his defences thanks to an inducker. It was a fast bowler’s ultimate dream, drawing the batter forward and bamboozling him through sheer deviation and air speed to boot.
“The biggest challenge when we go overseas is getting wickets with our seam bowling, and we haven’t always had the personnel for that,” Sri Lanka’s bowling coach Dharshana Gamage reflected. “But in the last few years we’ve been able to build up our seam bowling, and now have the required mix of bowlers to be able to win a Test match.”
“In our domestic structure, we’ve made some small changes too. We’ve played more matches on tracks that assist seamers a bit more,” Gamage pointed out. “In tournaments like the National Super League, we’ve been able to build that seam-bowling depth. In the A teams, and emerging squads as well, we’ve paid special attention to developing fast bowlers, and promoting them. It’s a programme that’s been in place for several years, and we’re now seeing the results.”
Desired outcomes rarely materialize straight off the bat. It might be too soon to judge the ‘true wicket’ Khanyile and Flint, the rookie and the master, had set out to achieve.
