South Africa saved yet another Test when they drew the second Test at Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC) to claim their first series in Sri Lanka in 21 years and reclaim the No 1 spot in the Test rankings. Abhishek Mukherjee looks at what makes the South African batting line-up work.
Runs were never a factor. The fastest scorer was Quinton de Kock, who scored 37 off 92 balls at a strike rate of 40.2. Nobody else went above a strike rate of 30. They did not do anything flashy. They did not need to. They just had to hang in, a task they executed with perfection.
One must remember that this list includes Hashim Amla (strike rate of 90 in ODIs), de Kock (ODI strike rate 87.9), Faf du Plessis (the T20I captain), JP Duminy (ODI strike rate 83.6), and AB de Villiers (arguably the most destructive batsman in the world); this also included Vernon Philander, Dale Steyn, and Tahir — all of whom are in the side to bowl.
They have managed to master the art of batting in the fourth innings of Tests. Let us consider the top Test run-scorers.
Great batsmen in fourth innings of Tests
I
NO
R
Ave
BF
Balls /dismissal
Sachin Tendulkar
60
16
1,625
36.93
3,203
72.80
Ricky Ponting
43
14
1,462
50.41
2,382
82.14
Jacques Kallis
47
15
1,332
41.63
3,108
97.13
Rahul Dravid
57
18
1,575
40.38
3,998
102.51
Brian Lara
46
5
1,440
35.12
2,761
67.34
Steve Waugh
31
7
613
25.54
1,436
59.83
Shivnarine Chanderpaul
47
11
1,567
43.53
3,310
91.94
Graeme Smith
41
10
1,611
51.97
2,572
82.97
Inzamam-ul-Haq
31
8
867
37.70
1,647
71.61
VVS Laxman
38
11
1,095
40.56
2,159
79.96
Matthew Hayden
39
13
1,287
49.50
2,052
78.92
Virender Sehwag
34
5
901
31.07
1,104
38.07
Alec Stewart
39
6
1,134
34.36
2,339
70.88
Alastair Cook
37
6
1,097
35.39
2,395
77.26
Michael Clarke
21
3
658
36.56
1,194
66.33
David Gower
25
6
633
33.32
1,303
68.58
Kevin Pietersen
32
5
1,017
37.67
1,656
61.33
Mark Waugh
27
7
820
41.00
1,558
77.90
Total
695
166
20,734
39.19
40,177
75.95
Total(sans South African batsmen)
607
141
17,791
38.18
34,497
74.03
[Note: The number of balls faced by earlier batsmen is generally not available]
It is evident that Jacques Kallis, with 97 balls per fourth innings dismissal, ranks next to only Rahul Dravid’s 102.5. Graeme Smith takes the third spot (do note his superlative average) with only Shivnarine Chanderpaul sneaking in between.
But these are the biggest South African names in the past decade. What about the current ones? Let us check the eleven men who played at SSC.
Current South African XI: fourth innings of Tests
I
NO
R
Ave
BF
Balls / dismissal
Alviro Petersen
11
2
176
19.56
381
42.33
Dean Elgar
3
1
24
12.00
91
45.50
Quinton de Kock
1
37
37.00
92
92.00
Hashim Amla
26
3
891
38.74
1,738
75.57
AB de Villiers
28
5
1,002
43.57
2,383
103.61
Faf du Plessis
6
1
334
66.80
1,079
215.80
JP Duminy
8
1
173
24.71
564
80.57
Vernon Philander
4
4
129
258
Dale Steyn
13
3
157
15.70
433
43.30
Imran Tahir
2
2
4
21
Morne Morkel
8
1
60
8.57
167
23.86
Total
110
23
2,987
34.33
7,207
82.84
Top eight
87
17
2,766
39.51
6,586
94.09
What does this mean? The giants of the sport have collectively done worse than the current South African XI (which contains youngsters and tail-enders), though they are slightly behind in batting average. However, if we consider only the top eight (which includes Philander, who has never been dismissed in the fourth innings of a Test despite facing 258 balls) they go past the big guns in terms of batting average, and substantially more when it comes to balls faced per dismissal.
(Abhishek Mukherjee is the Deputy Editor and Cricket Historian at CricketCountry. He blogs here and can be followed on Twitter here)
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