South Africa: The fourth innings champions

It was yet another close encounter for South Africa.

South Africa drew the final Test, won the series against Sri Lanka, reclaimed No 1 Test rank © AFP

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.

It was yet another close encounter; South Africa (albeit aided by rain) had to bat for what turned out to be 111 overs to save the Test. And they did it, yet again. Every batsman contributed to the 666-ball fightback. No 10 batsman Imran Tahir faced the least balls (21, and he remained not out).

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)