Well, well, well. Maybe England’s abject showing in the UAE last year wasn’t so abject after all. We might have lost 3-0 but at least the games were relatively tight until the final day.
South Africa, on the other hand, have just been absolutely pulverised, destroyed, embarrassed, dismantled (add your own verb here) in the first test – succumbing meekly by seven wickets in a game Misbah’s men dominated from the start.
On the face of it, Pakistan’s triumph might seem like a surprise. However, is it really that surprising? England fans know only too well that pace bowlers get little out of the slow surfaces in the UAE, and spin plays a decisive role.
South Africa’s main spinner, Robin Petersen, conceded 125 runs in just 29 overs during the match. He failed to take a single wicket.
Saeed Ajmal on the other hand – surely the best spinner in the world by quite some distance – conceded just 133 runs in a whopping 61 overs, and took six wickets (including four in the second innings which effectively wrapped up the match).
Of course, there will always be whispers about Ajmal’s action. Before the rules were relaxed to accommodate doosras that make much of the western world wince, Ajmal probably wouldn’t have had an international career.
However, complaints about the purity of his action are irrelevant in series involving South Africa.
For years the Cricketboks fielded Johan Botha, whose action is under scrutiny yet again, without worrying about what the rest of the world thought. It seems a bit rich for their fans to complain about Ajmal, who is one of the great characters of the modern game, simply because he’s effective in all forms of the game.
Anyway, there’s still a long way to go in this series. South Africa are a fine team, and they don’t often lose two test matches in a row. They’re not world number one for nothing.
However, one wonders how they can overcome such a miss-match in spin bowling reserves. Saeed Ajmal will take wickets for fun on slow and low surfaces, whereas the likes of Philander and Morkel are effectively neutralised.
Robin Petersen will need to bowl a whole lot better. However, as England found out last year, it doesn’t really matter how well your bowlers perform if the batsmen can’t get first innings runs on the board.
After the match, most South African journalists blamed the defeat on ring rust: Graeme Smith’s side only played one warm-up match, and key performers are returning from injury.
Sound familiar? That’s exactly what the English press said in 2012 when we were the world’s number one ranked side. We all know how the rest of that series went.
James Morgan
Not ideal for SA, for similar reasons England suffered. Easy to underestimate Pak for one thing. Also, SA produces some very juicy wickets, As brilliant as their pace bowlers are, they like and receive a lot of help (Philander looks very ordinary outside of SA). The UAE’s are some of the deadest wickets going.
Thirdly, the one obvious weakness of SA’s batsmen is spin and, as you say, Pakistan’s are probably the best in the world.
And Pakistan are a bloody good side when they can be bothered. When they can’t, well, they are worse than Zim.
Yeah, that’s why they’re so easy to underestimate. For long periods they can look worse than Zim, then suddenly they blow the best team in the world off the park.
They’ll go back to being crap any second, sadly.