SK Flashback: The match that changed cricket forever

Achieving the impossible

(Video courtesy: Play Station YouTube channel)

We have to wonder about the thoughts bouncing around in Smith’s mind when he stepped out to bat 25 minutes later. Did he really believe the target was achievable? What was Herschelle Gibbs thinking when he joined his captain in the second over after Boeta Dippenaar departed?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter because their subsequent actions reveal to us more than their thoughts ever could. The two warriors put up the most magnificent second wicket stand in cricketing history. Every bowler was punished. They amassed 190 runs in the next 20 overs, giving their team a platform so stable that NASA could have launched rockets off of it.

Smith departed 10 runs short of his century but Gibbs continued, his batting as extravagant as Ponting’s earlier. It was a supreme display of strength, skill and self-confidence, helped by Nathan Bracken who let him off by dropping a sitter. However, at an individual score of 175, he was caught a few meters from the boundary after hitting two consecutive sixes.

His team was still 136 runs short and the visitors were very much in the hunt. Even though they failed to stop the boundaries, they kept getting wickets in the next hour. South Africa needed 61 runs in the last six overs, with four wickets left. Another 30 were required in the last three and one more batsman had departed.

Ponting handed the ball to Mick Lewis for the 48th over and Mark Boucher inside edged his third ball to the boundary. The universe had, perhaps, chosen a side. Two more hits to the rope brought the equation down to 13 off 12 balls.

The tension was so thick it turned the air foggy. The hosts became more cautious. They scored six runs in the penultimate over but lost their eighth wicket too. With seven to get in the last six balls, the batsmen ran a single and found the boundary off the first couple before Andrew Hall threw his wicket away.

One wicket or one hit – either could have won the match. The breadth of a hair couldn’t have separated the two teams but it was meant to be South Africa’s day. Boucher, that reliable saviour with a heart of steel, drove the ball over mid on and brought his ecstatic side home, to win the series.