Seventy-five minutes was all it took the South Africans to wrap up the final Test. Eighty-two deliveries. 49 runs added by England and seven wickets lost. It was an abject display by an England team that had played so well hitherto to win the series but, with the pressure off, had simply run out of mental energy. AB de Villiers may have double-ducks to his name in the match, but he knows what it is like now to win a match, and by 280 runs, a massive margin.
England started the day on 52 for three, and, with two wickets in two balls for Kagiso Rabada, ended on 101. With the wicket of Jimmy Anderson, the brilliant young bowler secured his sixth of the innings – at a cost of 32 runs – and 13th of the match. Only Makhaya Ntini, with 13-132 against West Indies in Trinidad in 2005, has better match figures for South Africa than Rabada’s 13-144. He was gift-wrapped wickets on the final day, but he has been an exceptional find for his country, and has put a spanner into the works of the old Steyn, Morkel, Philander combination. Who would dare to leave him out now?
After the game, Alastair Cook was able to collect the Basil D’Oliveira trophy, which his team had secured with their victory in the third Test at the Wanderers, so this match was a dead one as far as the series was concerned. But in the past nine months, there has been a worrying trend to these final games as far as England are concerned, a reverse almost of the old habit where they would win the dead matches having been beaten in a series.
Each of the five series played since April have resulted in defeats in the last match: in Barbados, West Indies won by five wickets to draw the series; at Headingley, New Zealand’s 199-run win also secured a draw in a two match series; having secured the Ashes, they were trounced at the Oval by an innings and 46 runs; and against Pakistan, in Sharjah, they were beaten by 127 runs. Only the Ashes series and this one were dead rubbers: of the others,only in the UAE were they not leading the series going into the final game.
It has made a difference to how the team can be perceived, with seven wins, seven defeats and draws only in Antigua, Abu Dhabi and Cape Town. To beat Australia in an Ashes series, and the No1-ranked side on their home grounds, is a considerable achievement but it could have looked even more impressive.
In 2009, when England won the Ashes at home, there was an idea that some of the bare statistics did not support the win, in terms of centuries scored or wickets taken, and there is an element of that here now. The leading run scorer, Hashim Amla ( 470 at 67.14), and wicket taker ( Rabada, 22 at 21.9) are South African, and the South Africans made six centuries to England’s three, with four five-wicket hauls to England’s one. But that is not necessarily how series are won. There was some depth in that Ben Stokes made 411 runs at 58.71, Joe Root 386 at 55.14 and Jonny Bairstow 359 at 71.8, all considerably better than South Africa’s next best, while Broad took 18 wickets at 20.16.
In Durban, and, particularly at the Wanderers, through Broad’s inspirational brilliance , England seized the moments that proved decisive, something that has eluded them in the past.
England may be a side still learning how to play the game consistently, but they have progressed in this regard. In Stokes, they have a free-spirited player whose burgeoning reputation has only been enhanced in South Africa and whose presence will underpin the England side for many years to come: he epitomises the manner in which England would like to see their cricket played. His runs, with that astounding 258 in Cape Town that will live long in the memory, when added to 12 wickets at 29.16 saw him as man of the series and few would argue with that.
England’s batting performance on the final day was described by the head coach Trevor Bayliss as “ limp” which is an understatement. On a pitch that was always going to be tricky, with the erratic bounce in particular, survival was never really going to be an option. But the manner of their undoing just looked mediocre when set against the way that they had played hitherto.
It has been an intensive nine months of Test cricket, as much as any team has ever had to undertake, and Cook has said how much the tour of the UAE in particular, with the heat and pitches, took out of him and his players. We do need to understand the physical and mental demands placed on the players.
Here they had already won this series so taking the foot off the gas, even subconsciously, was perhaps understandable. They were also caught between the two stools of a positive approach and an attempt to play through the day. England have fought memorable rearguards in the past, not least on this ground, but they were in matches where the series was still live. Would England have played as they did had this series still been live? Almost certainly not, but in the end, although they did not do themselves justice on the final day, it did no damage.
South Africa’s final day task was made simple. James Taylor, who top-scored with 24, got a head-jerking snorter from Morne Morkel; Root, dropped at the wicket from Dane Piedt’s first ball of the day, and all at sea against him for some reason, edged the same bowler to slip; and Bairstow, after a couple of thumping pedigree boundaries on either side of the wicket, edged Rabada to the keeper for the first of the bowler’s four last-day wickets, having been taken at slip from the previous delivery which turned out to be a no ball.
Stokes, meanwhile, was only going to play one way and after one top-edged boundary, he pulled Morkel straight to deep midwicket. Broad, throwing the bat at Rabada and caught at first slip, and Anderson, yorked on the foot and lbw on review, brought the series to a close.