England vs South Africa 2012

The most awaited test series of is about to commence. It’s clearly England’s biggest challenge after reaching to the top of the Test ratings table. England have dominated Test Cricket in the last two years or so, in England-like conditions. England’s real strength is with the ball and they have a tendency of making steady inroads into any side’s batting order.

Bowling is a brotherhood and ideas are shared out among the family. Anderson and Broad have incorporated Australian and Pakistani thinking to enhance their basic skills. Anderson ofcourse can swing the ball both ways at a decent pace. Broad is tall, quick and can swing and seam the bowl around. Anderson has been employing his wobble seam deliveries on the unhelpful tracks – an art he has perfected in the last 18 months. Wobble seam was an idea picked up first from Australia’s Stuart Clark. He managed to make ball jag about off the blandest of surfaces, releasing the ball so that the seam oscillated from side to side rather than flying bolt upright, hoping the ball would pitch on the edge, rather than the middle of the seam, and therefore deviate.

In 2010, England spotted Mohammad Asif using the same method to make the ball dart around for Pakistan. Spreading his fingers wider apart on the ball, Anderson experimented with the technique and found that he too could get the seam wobbling in flight and move unpredictably on pitching. In truth wobble seam is just a new name for a bowling strategy probably as old as Trent Bridge itself. Club bowlers up and down the country will be familiar with the idea of varying the position of the seam on release, hoping to make something happen.

Broad and Jimmy can follow up with a sequence of cross-seamed bouncers, wobble seamers and cutters, all delivered to a precise spot on the pitch. From a distance, it just looks like old fashioned line and length but on closer inspection, it is finger-tip control of the highest order.

The likes of Trott, Bell and Pietersen make the English middle order stable and strong like it has never been before and with Strauss now having rediscovered his batting rhythm, England can luxuriate in the knowledge that they have the most enduring opening partnership in the game and opening bowlers – Stuart Broad and James Anderson – ranked joint third in the world.

They have both aspects of the new ball covered. And in Test cricket, that is generally the key to success.

On the other hand, South African cricket is characterized by some admirable qualities. They were the first country to set the modern store on fielding. Their fast bowlers are the world’s fittest and, in the case of Dale Steyn, the best. They have always produced fine all-rounders and none greater than Jacques Kallis, who would like to seal his career with a last triumphant tour of England.

Quickness in learning from mistakes, however, is not one of those qualities. Graeme Smith’s touring team are doing everything to prepare for their three-Test series against England to decide which country is No 1, except learn from the mistake they made on their last tour here in 2008.

On that occasion, South Africa went into the first Test so under-prepared that they were dismissed for 247 and followed on 346 runs behind. Lord’s flattened out, as it is now unfortunately helped South Africa escape with a draw, but they needed over nine hours of obduracy by their opening batsman Neil McKenzie to thwart England.

For warming up, the South Africans in 2008 had two three-day county games, or five days in all as one was washed out. After a long lay-off, these South Africans have a two-day game against Somerset and a three-day game against Kent, in the middle of a ‘summer’ when the jet-stream has decided to advance much further south than normal.

Alviro Petersen, who has replaced McKenzie as Smith’s opening partner, captained Glamorgan last year. He is one of the few international batsmen left, who grew up playing street cricket, in his case in Port Elizabeth, rather than in academies and private schools. He captained Glamorgan in 2010, and made his 1,000 championship runs at an average of 42, but left straight afterwards as the man-management did not go so well. Early this season, when he switched to Essex, he struggled like batsmen all over the country against the swinging and jagging ball – but on returning to Cardiff to play against Glamorgan, he scored 145. Between them, Smith and Petersen have the requisite pool of knowledge of English conditions, yet they still need time in the middle.

Jacques Rudolph never made a real fist of Test cricket until this year, when he was brought back as South Africa’s No?6. For a long time, he needed his debut innings of 222 not out against Bangladesh to keep his batting average in the 30s, but after his brilliant years for Yorkshire, and dropping down the order where his proclivity to play round his front pad is less exposed, Rudolph has come good at the age of 31 — and he made more early-season runs than most for Surrey.

But the most important of the junior players is Vernon Philander. He is not built like Glenn McGrath, yet he has a similar fast-medium pace and trajectory — and, at the other end, he has the inestimable benefit of Steyn snarling and bowling fast late outswing, or Morne Morkel wrapping the batsmen’s gloves with his steep bounce.

Dale Steyn deserves to be No 1 in the world Test rankings: he averages five wickets per Test for South Africa, which puts him in the rarest company. His fast, late outswing is particularly dangerous for England’s opening batsmen as it threatens to pin Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook leg-before if they plant their front foot. Throw in a fiery bouncer and temperament, and reverse-swing, and he is pretty near the complete warhead. AB de Villiers can be anointed as great if he plays a decisive role in this series. He is a brilliant, fast-handed player of pace, and has succeeded against spin in Asia as no current England batsman has. At present, he is 28 and at his peak. These two are definitely the best two in South Africa’s line-up.

So many South African fast bowlers, especially from the High Veld, bowl too short on arrival in England. But Philander will not do the same, partly because he comes from Cape Town and partly because he had five early-season championship games for Somerset, taking 23 wickets. This experience supplemented a brief stay with Middlesex when he was little more than a burly limited-overs all-rounder, whom nobody imagined would take his first 50 Test wickets in only seven matches, the second fastest ever.

The drawback for England is that the first Test is at the Oval, the ground closest to those in South Africa, where their lack of preparedness will be less exposed. If it were at a nice swinging ground like Trent Bridge, which has been lined up for Australia next year with that express purpose no doubt in mind, England would be fancied even more to go 1-0 up.

England would be pushing it a little too far if they got the Oval groundsman to produce a dustbowl such as Australia were given for the Ashes decider in 2009. But the ploy is tempting: Graeme Swann would have Smith and Rudolph as left-handed targets, and would be guaranteed to out-bowl Imran Tahir, the flamboyant and nomadic wrist-spinner who had played for 20 teams in three continents before qualifying for South Africa.

The Oval Test will be all-important. If England cash in on South Africa’s under-preparedness, the tourists will be forced to abandon another of their characteristics and go for a win before they have made sure they cannot lose.