St George's Park Test becomes a three-day affair

Three-day cricket, how to play. If a book of that title exists, Temba Bavuma and Pat Cummins wouldn’t mind a copy on their bedside table by the time they retire on Monday night. Because, with 137 overs of the first two days lost to rain at St George’s Park, the second Test is effectively a three-day match .

And that changes things. Both attacks harbour quality bowlers but dismissing batting line-ups of this calibre on a decent pitch twice is difficult enough in five days. It’s much harder when you lose 30% of the match to rain and a wet outfield.

Thus declarations become artsy, crafty and never straightforward. “There’s less time to bowl teams out, that’s the nature of the beast,” Chris Morris told Cricbuzz. “You’ve got to dangle a carrot if you are going to declare; give a team an opportunity to potentially want to chase it down.

But if they are going to chase they’re going to have to play aggressive cricket.” Cricketers are creatures of habit. All of those involved in the Test are well acquainted with matches that last four or five days. But three?

It’s a crowd. Not a cricket match. Except it is.

In South Africa anyway. Three-day cricket has never been a thing in Australia, where the Sheffield Shield started in 1892/92 with timeless matches. They became five-dayers in 1927/28 and — from the summer of 1930/31 — four-day affairs.

That’s different here, where three-day cricket remains a thing — in the first-class competition played by second-division provincial sides. Until the 1991/92 season all first-class cricket in the country was played over three days. The change came when South Africa were readmitted to the international fold and realised they needed to catch up with global trends.

So the South Africans know their way around a three-day match better than their opponents. All of the players in the home side’s XI have been involved in the lesser-spotted format, from Kagiso Rabada’s trio of three-day games to Bavuma’s 28. Marques Ackerman, Anrich Nortjé, Aiden Markram and Ryan Rickelton have played 20 or more three-day matches.

The Australians aren’t strangers to the stuff, either. But most of their experience has come in tour matches, which no-one tries to win. That brings us to the nub of the St George’s Park Test.

The chances of South Africa winning are waning. They were 97/5 at stumps on Monday and are unlikely to score enough runs in this innings to spend the rest of the match trying to bowl the Aussies out twice. Their aim surely is to bat for as long as possible.

The Australians have a bigger dog in the fight. Should they bowl South Africa out cheaply enough and gather runs at a good pace they might have enough time to dismiss Bavuma’s team again. Ashwell Prince was feisty in his playing days.

As a coach, nothing’s changed. He told a press conference he didn’t see matters that way: “We still have to bowl. The ball is moving around and I think it will as the Test match goes on; there are already some divots out there.

“The weather before and during the match might mean the pitch started out softer than usual. If the sun comes out it might firm up and the ball might move around faster maybe. There’s still quite a bit of time left in the game.

So anything is possible.” Khaya Zondo wasn’t as positive. “If you’re South Africa you think [the amount of overs lost] gives you time to regroup, see what you want to do and what sort of result you want,” Zondo told Cricbuzz. “They want to win but they’re under pressure.

But even if Australia are playing better than them they could still earn a draw. Because you have to play really badly to lose in three days. “But Australia want to be on the field to try and win the match and the series.

They want to be intentional about how they go about it — maybe declare early, allowing time for the result they want. Because the chances now are high that the match will be drawn. Time is the enemy.

You have to give it time. Or score faster.” Morris played 21 three-day first-class matches and Zondo 42, a dozen of them as captain. But many of those games were engineered: if a first innings reached 85 overs a compulsory declaration was triggered.

There’s nothing artsy or crafty about that. Nor about what you can no longer remember. David Bedingham and Rickelton have the freshest experience of the three-day game, having played it in October 2019.

At the other end of that scale are Bavuma and Simon Harmer, who had their last three-day matches in January 2014 and November 2011. Cummins has played at least four of them, most recently against a South Africa A side captained by Zondo in Benoni in February 2018. We all know what happened next as that tour lurched from one drama to the next.

The here and now on Monday was that play didn’t start until five minutes into what was the original tea interval. How did the players deal with the dead time? “The team were due to leave [the hotel] at 8.15am; the normal leaving time,” Prince said.

“But there was lots of rain overnight that persisted through the morning. From the management point of view the instruction was to stay close to your phone and for us to have contact with the ground and see what time we play was likely to start. “We had a good idea about that when the rain stopped [at about 10.20am], but then the ground needed to be prepared.

So I think we left at about 1.25pm.” What was the plan once the resumption was set, given the revised times? “It’s a session; you have to bat it out,” Prince said. “Nothing changes in terms of your original gameplan, which is to build partnerships.” South Africa lost Ackerman, Matthew Breetzke and Rickelton for the addition of 77 runs in the 43.4 overs they faced on Monday.

That was despite Australia being without Josh Hazlewood, who was off the field with a stomach bug. Rickelton survived when Marnus Labuschagne made a hash of a chest-high chance at leg slip that was garnered by Cummins. Thirteen balls later Rickelton chased an away swinger from Scott Boland.

The resultant outside edge looked like it should have been Alex Carey’s catch. But the wicketkeeper didn’t move. So all 1.94 metres of Matt Renshaw at first slip plunged downward to complete the job centimetres above the turf and after the ball had passed him.

It was an outrageous grab, and it ended a stand of 52. Boland, who bowled like a whip on legs on Sunday in three overs that yielded 2/5, took his figures to 4/31 on Monday. If Australia are to win you fancy he will do a lot of the winning.

Should South Africa draw or even — as Prince might argue — win, Bavuma seems set to earn a chunk of the credit. He was 41 not out, six of them hooked off Cummins with visceral violence. The ball towered over fine leg and kept going all the way into Park Drive, where it was retrieved by a parking attendant.

“The skipper is out there digging deep,” Prince said. “Long may it continue tomorrow. Hopefully he’ll have a few partners digging in with him.

It’s an opportunity for people to make a name for themselves.” Those people are Wiaan Mulder, who was two not out, and Marco Jansen. Harmer, Nortjé and Kagiso Rabada aren’t the worst, but — not for the first time — South Africa need Bavuma to stand taller than the rest.