Centurion is a great place to watch Test cricket, but even if you’re not particularly interested, there’s enough to keep you entertained. The queues for cheesy chips snaked out on most days, and more than 2 million rands of alcohol were sold. Couples lounged around the embankments shading themselves under giant umbrellas. Over by the scoreboard, a few people were jogging on the spot, raising money for a charitable cause. Unsupervised children of varying ages – invariably wearing the wildly popular fluorescent pink ODI shirt – set up their own games of cricket, scurrying back into the ground whenever a cheer went up to investigate if news was good or bad.
But once lunch was over on day 4, that area which encircles SuperSport Park was no more a hive of activity. Nearly everyone had returned from the concession stands, those dozing under the umbrellas sat up. Even the children had packed away their little plastic bats and balls, aware this was a tense finish, but unsure why a multi-decade history of trauma was writ large on their parents’ faces.
Mohammad Abbas is bowling; he was bowling before lunch, and he was bowling yesterday. At this point, it seems like he’s been bowling for longer than he was out of the Test side. He might have been bowling since 2007, the last time Pakistan won a Test match in South Africa, because Pakistan have effectively been playing the same Test match here since.
There are reasons South Africa cannot win this Test, primarily because it matters in a wider context. They are a handful of runs away from making a World Test Championship final, and a crack at yet another piece of silverware. They are – or were – in a winning position, and having begun to squander it, the path of heartbreaking failure looks like it has locked beneath their feet.
But expecting Pakistan to win Tests in South Africa is a bit like being believing a steady diet of cheese will cure gout. That it failed to do so doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the cheese. It’s just not what cheese does.
This makes it a contest of a movable force against a stoppable object, because any world where Pakistan win this sort of Test in South Africa turns the narrative upside down. The plot armour that has scripted a Pakistan defeat this Test appears nigh-on impenetrable. When South Africa have bowled poorly, Pakistan just offered their wickets up. When South African wickets were falling in a bunch, Pakistan spread out their fields, threw in an hour of indifferent bowling, and ensured there was enough “cushion”, as Shan Masood called it, for a South African win to still be believably scripted. Masood pointed out this had been an issue with Pakistan in every innings. He just meant this match, but he might as well have extended that characterisation to about half the Tests Pakistan had ever played in this country.
But boy, is Abbas trying to change all that. After a first innings where his exclusion from the Pakistan side appeared vindicated, he’s working on reversing more than just one narrative. Every other over, he takes off his floppy hat, almost on autopilot, and walks over to the bowler’s end. It appears human function doesn’t resume after the over begins either, so metronomic is Abbas’s end-product. Eighty-six of the 117 balls he sent down across the innings hit a hard length outside off stump, giving South Africa no breathing room from his end and picking up half his wickets. For a player who has got more than half of his Test dismissals hitting the stumps, a further 17 threatened off stump, and produced the other three.
