Given there was a certain scepticism in advance of this game about South Africa’s suitability for a place in this final, their spot having been secured through a run of good results, mostly at home, in short series that notably did not involve either of the two sides currently ranked ahead of them, perhaps they needed an early marker of excellence, a demonstration of merit. Fortunately they had just the man.
At 10.30am the pre-match pyrotechnic mist cleared with Kagiso Rabada at the nursery end, ball in hand. Perhaps Usman Khawaja’s personal fog lingered a while longer, the first ball of the day zinging past his outside edge and sending the Australian opener into survival mode. Rabada started his day with a maiden, and then another, and then another. Khawaja faced every delivery, including a couple more that he barely survived. And then, two balls into Rabada’s fourth over of the day, one he didn’t.
It was not only because of those fireworks, or the helpfully overcast conditions above, that Rabada started this game under a cloud, the player having served a one-month suspension in April after testing positive for cocaine in January. “That wasn’t my best moment,” Rabada said after the close of play. “Now life moves on. Every game that I play for South Africa I try to do my best. So I didn’t give any more or any less effort than I usually do.”
If there was some unexceptional batting on a day when 14 wickets fell, many were outdone simply by the quality and consistency of the bowling. While Australia’s Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc pushed each other to ever greater heights, for South Africa Rabada was outstanding.
“He’s just got good skills,” Steve Smith said. “He can shape the ball away. He can nibble it both ways. He’s relentless. He’s always at you. He’s always up for the challenge. He charges in all day, and his record speaks for itself, doesn’t it?”
Rabada has now claimed 332 Test victims, this performance nudging him ahead of Allan Donald to fourth on his country’s list of all-time wicket-takers. “Growing up I’ve been inspired by those who’ve come before, and seen what they’ve done on the big stage,” he said. “As a kid I was inspired to want to do the same thing. So I guess to be in that list of names is something special.”
The same words could describe this performance. Cricketing mythology has it that unfamiliarity with the Dukes ball and the Lord’s slope disadvantages visiting teams here, but Rabada used both expertly to coax the ball into marginal diversions from its path, and to befuddle his opponents.
The scoreboard will tell you that Beau Webster was the most successful of them, but it disguises a period after lunch when the 31-year-old seemed completely unable to understand what was happening to him, just as those watching struggled to work out how he negotiated it. Rabada’s first spell of six overs yielded just nine runs and two wickets, Cameron Green becoming the second when he, like Khawaja, was well caught at slip. His second brought 26 runs, no wickets, but brilliant entertainment.
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There was one notably poor delivery, perhaps his only one of the day, that Smith dealt with appropriately, before he got to work on Webster, and soon this Beau was tied up in knots. Twice the ball jagged off a wobble seam, veered up the slope and just cleared the stumps; on various occasions it beat his top edge, his inside edge and his outside edge. Then there was one that crashed into Webster’s leg as it arrowed towards middle stump, halfway up. A second sound saved him, perhaps the bat clipping a pad. “Did he hit it?” Temba Bavuma asked as the countdown timer showed the seconds ticking away on a possible review. Webster was on eight.
He had scored another 64 by the time Rabada made amends, during a spell after tea that brought three more wickets and with them a place on the honours board. He also took five in the first innings the last time he played here, three years ago, and perhaps Stuart Broad’s brief stint as South Africa’s bowling consultant, focused on preparing their bowlers for this ground’s unique challenges, had not been entirely necessary.
Unless South Africa can produce a partnership big enough to haul them back into the ascendency they briefly held here, Rabada will have to repeat, or even improve on, that performance when he comes to bowl again. Fortunately pressure and tension seem not to affect him. “I mean, being an athlete is all about managing that,” he said. “I guess dealing with it is just understanding what’s the bottom line. And the bottom line is, if you’re a bowler, try to bowl a good line and length. As a batter, I guess it’s about keeping the good ball out and scoring off balls that aren’t quite there. That’s the bottom line. Everything else is just noise.”
