cricket with balls

The more I see of South Africa the more I see a little bit of England’s post 2005 hangover.

When South Africa finally ended Australia’s home series stranglehold they didn’t go nuts like England did.

There was no public fellating of each other, no one was licking champagne out of orifices, and Nelson Mandela didn’t give Neil McKenzie anything, not even a hug.

They were just happy, excited, and proud of themselves.

There was no reason to think that when they got home they wouldn’t beat an Australian team with Andrew McDonald in it.

Sure they had lost a semi dead rubber test against Australia, ruining their chances of going number one on the ICC charts with a win, but they had just beaten fucken Australia at home a few days earlier.

When they played Australia at home they didn’t seem to get it.  They let Mitchell Johnson bully them, got sucked in by Phillip Hughes, didn’t put enough pressure on Marcus North and quickly they were fucked.

The only test they won, Bryce’s test, meant very little as Australia had beaten them at home straight after they had unofficially got to the pinnacle of test cricket.

Then they had the hibernation from test cricket. This included another poor world T20 campaign, and then not even making the fucken semi finals of the white jacket cup at home.

England did quite well in the white jacket cup (for a team as utterly rubbish at one dayers as they can be), and also had the advantage of knowing both teams had played Australia in their last test series, and only one of them had won.

Before the series I had this feeling that England could win, not based on any logic or anything, but just a fuzzy feeling.  South Africa just looked beatable.

In the first test England put on the England show, and even with South Africa’s best bowler missing they went as close to losing as you can.

In this test England won with their albatrosses coming good. Cook went back to his nuggetty self-determined self, Bell enjoyed the cushion of the situation and Stuart Broad pitched the ball up and got it to move.

It is only two tests in, and from next test South Africa should have their bowling unit sorted out, but England has started this series in eerie Ashes style.

And personally I worry about a side that go into bat 200 and change runs behind and lose three of their top five without playing a shot.

The cliché would be saying that they failed to play a shot in anger, because they just failed to play fucking shots at all.  See how that works. I know.

A series just like the Ashes, if only you had a book telling you what would happen next.

Probably not.

But I had this post written ages ago about how I thought South Africa looked a little off the boil at the moment, and since they hadn’t played test cricket in almost 12 months and their one day and 2020 form was just ordinary, England could take this series pretty easily.

Since then England has been hell bent on playing four bowlers and whatever Ian Bell is.

Going on their form in the UK, England needs five bowlers just because two of them go missing at any one time.

It makes me think that South Africa should win.

Until you look at the fact for the first time since, well forever, South Africa are going into a match with four bowlers.

Neither team seems to like doing it, but due to injuries, retirements and Luke Wright, this is where we find ourselves.

I still think England will win, but before I was using a educated hunch, now I just feel like I should pick one of the teams.

This series could be the Ashes redux, so you should buy my book so you know what is coming.