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Proteas turn on the power

While I was doing the commentary, one of the readers asked: "If England can't defend 282, then what is a good target to set on this pitch?"

282 is in fact a very defensible total on this pitch -- but that assumes that your bowlers bowl to their field, that they don't stray from the line specified, and that you have a variety of bowlers in the first place.

England lacked in all areas. For one thing, there was no good opening bowler. They had one relatively good spinner in Giles, but that's about it. Even that could have been covered up had the bowlers held to a line -- but time and again, with no fielder at third man and fine leg, the bowlers drifted off line of the stumps and got milked.

No, 282 was never going to be enough, not with an attack like that against a side that bats Nicky Boje at number 10.

Having said that, 565 runs have been scored off just under 98 overs, so where does that leave the predictions of slow pitches and low scoring games? The short answer to that would be that the sun, over the last few days, has baked the pitches hard, negating the effect of the rain, sucking up all the sub surface moisture and easing things down. And the outfield is lightning fast, so unless it rains again (the forecast says it could, as early as tomorrow), runs could continue to come in job lots from here on.

A rather interesting offshoot and one that I didn't expect, given the pre-match conditions, is that twice on the trot, the team batting second has won. Conventional wisdom is still that the side batting first has the edge, so in analysing this particular aspect, maybe you need to keep in mind that both times (more so in this second game) the bowlers do bear a fair share of the blame for giving away a won game.

Hansie Cronje gambled big time on this one. Missing his three frontline pacemen -- Pollock, Donald and Klusener -- the South African skipper went one better, resting both Silverstein and Makhaya Nitini, and playing three spinners in the side in Symcox, Crookes and Boje. The assumption probably was that England, being not so good players of spin, could find run-getting a hazard against that kind of attack.

That left Dawson, a good performer for the side in the Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games, as the only frontline quick -- and Dawson is, at his very best, a reasonably nippy medium pace.

Going for the pot, Cronje extended his gamble by putting Symcox in the firing line as early as the second over and the veteran responded by sending back Alistair Brown early on. In what was developing into a battle of wits, Hollioake responded by holding back Graeme Hick and sending in Mark Ealham, to pinch-hit. And Ealham took that particular trick for his side, with a blistering assault on Symcox that fetched 17 runs in over number 8 that was the highlight of an innings of 44/37 -- precisely what his skipper required.

This could in fact be the most constant feature of this tournament -- teams being liable to try and go for the maximum possible in the first 15, to compensate for possible slowness of the track in the latter stages.

England thus were fair cruising, at 20/1 iin 5, 56/1 in 10 and 84/2 in 15 -- but at that point came one of those slumps that turn games on their head. The main culprit was not so much the bowling, or even the pitch, but the English batsmen's insistence on playing far too much off the back foot, allied with injudicious shot selection. Hick and Lloyd both fell to the cut, played to balls that were totally unsuitable for the stroke, and with the off colour Knight departing as well, England ended over number 20 at 97/5, with the last recognised pair at the crease and truly behind the eight ball.

It was at this point that South Africa must have been missing its absent bowling stars the most -- where a bowling side would have gone for the kill, Cronje with his inexperienced bowling attack was forced to concentrate on keeping things tight, sitting on the situation and hoping the England batsmen would mess up, rather than actively trying to make things happen.

To the credit of Hollioake and Fairbrother, they did precisely what the situation demanded -- concentrated on working the singles during the middle phase, often taking on South Africa's excellent fielders in the process, and once set, slowly began to up the tempo.

And they did this in contrasting styles. Fairbrother, who has played some league cricket in Bangladesh and is familiar with the conditions, is the quintessential nudger into the gaps, getting a bulk of his runs behind the wicket on either side. Hollioake, meanwhile, is a bustler, rarely playing from within the crease, preferring to come down to pace and spin alike. The two complimented each other perfectly, Fairbrother slipping into the anchor role while Hollioake got into an increasingly belligerent mode.

The recovery, told in figures, reads: 117/5 in 25, 130/5 in 30, 169/5 in 35, 198/5 in 40. In the process, the two batsmen put together England's highest ever partnership for the sixth wicket in one dayers and, by the time the game entered the death phase, had got the complete measure of the bowling.

Around this point, Hollioake was inspirational. For the third time in the three innings thus far in this tournament, it was the captain who dominated -- Hollioake's strokeplay, here, being most memorable for some clean, crisp inside out driving through and over the covers. Time and again, he kept making room with a half step to leg and playing the shot, often picking the ball off middle stump to blaze through the extra cover region.

Cronje ran out of options to the extent of calling on opener Rindell to bowl at the death -- strangely, though, he failed to use himself in the middle or end overs. His first spell of three overs went for 19, but that was during the Ealham blitz, one would have thought the SA skipper, with his ability to bowl wicket to wicket, could have come up with a few useful overs in the middle, and saved more of Kallis, and Boje, for the death.

In the event, Fairbrother's departure, trying to nudge to third man off the off stump once too often, didn't make much of a difference, as Jack Russell, oldest member of the England party, chipped in with a lovely little cameo and kept the marauding Hollioake company.

For England, the key lay in the fact that they conserved wickets for the death -- down five wickets at 20, they were in no position to take risks; but down 5 wickets at the 40 over mark put them in the perfect position to take on a bowling side lacking a large part of its regular set of dentures.

The result, England's largest ever ODI score against South Africa and, for Hollioake himself, his highest ODI score and the knowledge that he was the man responsible for putting England in a very strong position at the halfway mark, having opted to bat on winning the toss. As for South Africa, a few worries with the ball -- none of the bowlers on view looked really inspirational or penetrative, and the number of extras given away was rather on the generous side.

What they lack in bowling, though, the Proteas make up in the batting department -- I cant think of too many teams where Nicky Boje, who can hit them clean as a whistle, will come in at 10. And that gave them the luxury, in the chase, of really going for it from the get go, knowing that they had the depth to absorb a possible early wicket or two.

As it turned out, the problem didn't come up. Rindell, who tends to play around his pads a lot and shuts his bat face to such an extent that very few of his runs come in front of the wicket, especially in the V, struggled but Darryl Cullinan made up for it by batting as if his tail was on fire. 50 off 40 balls, 13 fours in there and the fours coming all round the wicket took the game completely out of England's hands, right at the outset.

Here's how SA went, through its innings, the scores given in five over progression: 26/0, 70/0, 95/0, 113/1, 127/2, 160/3, 198/3, 225/3 and 270/4 (in 45).

There was that huge burst in between 5-10, when 44 runs were clubbed mostly by Cullinan. Since then, the SA batsmen concentrated on keeping the board ticking over, with singles -- and England, setting its fielders too far back, helped the good work along.

Kallis went to an awful mix up with his captain, but Rhodes, having a brilliant run with the bat of late, and Hansie Cronje, easily the two most experienced players, took up from where Cullinan left off and put the game out of England's reach.

Cronje followed the tradition, thus far, of captains playing the leading role with the bat -- pacing himself beautifully, matching Rhodes in running between wickets, working the ball around constantly, keeping the target within reach and, once into the death and sure that he had batsmen back in the hut to take over if he fell, launching an assault that saw the ask rate reduced from just under six, to just over four.

From there, there was no way SA could lose, even despite the skipper mishitting his opposite number down square leg's throat with the target within touching distance.

The adjudicators, who I thought messed up yesterday, got today's man of the match right when they picked Cullinan -- that innings of his at the start really sealed the fate of this game, and made it easier for Cronje and Rhodes in particular to play without too much pressure.

Ironical, really, that England, who got to Dhaka a week before the start of the tournament, and even got in two practise games by way of acclimatising, are on the flight back home -- but with that kind of bowling attack, they were never in it really, and only Hollioake and Fairbrother playing out of their skins ensured that the defeat wasn't even bigger than it turned out to be.

That sets the stage for tomorrow's game between Sri Lanka and the Kiwis, which should be another cracker. Meanwhile, the full transcript of today's commentary being linked on the sports page, as usual, and we promise to get it right side up from tomorrow.

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