South Africa vs Australia 2014: A party in the pacy lane

Mitchell Johnson

A saturnine atmosphere has taken a turn for an exuberating, uproarious one. The game’s oldest form is enamouring a deluge of followers, courtesy a doughty attitude from the players, one of gumption and certitude.

Mirthless action spanning over five dour days and fifteen dreary sessions have paved way for nail biting, ravishing contests over the recent times. Performers have emerged and proven thespians have rediscovered their lost guile.

This February, as red ball cricket inches towards its most intriguing battle of wits and wile, the vivacity accompanying the marquee clash doesn’t restrict itself to the South African or Australian diaspora.

The spell which will turn millions of eyeballs worldwide towards the rainbow nation is undoubtedly the most anticipated, most relished one, but not often seen. When the best exponents of top notch fast bowling ply their trade, the planet’s cricket connoisseurs will drink thirstily, parched with days of pining.

The sense of sublime speed spurts adrenaline flow and makes stuff for incredible theatre. It is a fixture which will be dominated by the bowlers in the era of batsmen, a contest where the cherry will lord over the willow. Amidst an ensemble of ferocious fast men, two stand tall. Two men whose finesse will dictate the fortunes of their respective sides. It is a melee of Mitch’s quiver of arrows vs. Dale’s bag of tricks.

Change is constant, but the pace of change is wildly inconstant. The Ashes down under was preluded with a lot of codswallop about a fiery thunderbolt, destined to rewrite the fate of the baggy greens. One game was all it took for Mitch Johnson to walk the talk, enunciating and enacting every word doled out with a savage, draconian brutality. The Gabba’ became a slaughter house for the butchered to don the butcher’s hat. That perverse change in fortunes occurs at a blistering pace couldn’t be demonstrated more.

Johnson can surprise, mesmerise and astound the audience beyond the realms of imagination. The waywardness in his bowling wandered away for good. And when a bloke delivers in ten consecutive innings on the trot, it is a clear indication of an upheaval of fortunes, a change for the better.

The moustached marauder from Queensland eliciting fangs of fear amidst the best of willow wielders was a sight to behold, a sight which cricket aficionados will relish in the month long South African safari. He is in the form of his life, hurling his toe crushers with a vicious ferocity. The Australian summer is enough and more testimony to the fact that Mitchell Johnson has ascended from human frailty to machine-like invulnerability, bringing with him the zeitgeist of the Caribbean pace carnage of the eighties.

The numero uno spot, atop the ICC bowlers’ rankings was Dale Steyn’s second home (Recently, he was usurped by Vernon Philander.). Steyn is one of those rare prodigies with the bliss of endurance the planet witnessed in the modern era where fast bowling sensations die quicker than they are born. The incarnation of some true greats like Pollock and Ntini was carried to a truimphant completion as “Steyn-Gun” started to fire away at a super human consistency. Lean, mean, athletic, u name it- he had it (still has), all the attributes of a first rate, once in a generation quick.

Dale Steyn

With an enviable seam position, the ball appears gun barrel straight until the last moment. The batsman sets himself to play and lo behold! The cherry swerves away, serving the sweetest of kisses to the willow’s edge, making slip catchers earn their bucks. For long, Steyn has been a mystery too hard to fathom, a tale too twisted to comprehend, hitting batsmen world over where it hurts- on their confidence. The surreptitious serpent, he sets his prey up with a foxy guile before slaughtering it down. And it isn’t all brawn and no brains.

Time and again, Dale Steyn has exhibited exemplary skill in managing himself over the course of a game. Test cricket is much more than just running in hard all day, though workhorses indeed remain any captain’s prized possessions. ‘Knowing when to bowl the best deliveries in the game’- saving that extra ounce of energy to deliver the knockout punch, makes a good bowler a great one, transforms a champion into a legend. Steyn spooks, strangles and shatters, not batsmen but sides. If Mitch Johnson is the perniciously probing question thrown by the Aussies, Steyn is the perspicacious answer to the same.

That this series will witness an atmosphere where no quarter will be given and none will be asked is what makes the wait for it worthwhile. That the Proteas’ have enough and more firepower in their arsenal to combat the Aussie camouflage is what makes the battle bewitchingly beautiful. True, Aussies, in whites, haven’t been vanquished on African soil yet, but statisticians hardly don the protagonist’s hat in an arena of such extreme intensity. High on confidence, eleven men as fit as a fiddle, battle ready to fight fire with fire.

Graeme Smith’s men, an embodiment of excellence coupled with consistency, are the boys to beat. It is a no brainer. Michael Clarke faces an acid test and needs to beard the lion in its lair to drive home his legacy, to reiterate that his pogrom of the poms in the Aussie backyard was more than just bullying an English team that had run its course, battered by a slew of internal issues. And believe me, the excitement this mouth-watering contest brings to the table will be better off demonstrated than advertised. You beat the ‘man’ to be the ‘man’.