Few clichés in cricket withstand repeated use, yet this Test—suspended between drama and anticlimax—breathed such vitality into the game’s glorious uncertainty that the phrase felt newly minted. For two days, the trajectory of the match tilted inexorably toward a South African victory; by tea on the fifth, England had assumed the role of favourites. And when the encroaching darkness finally descended—with South Africa eight down and England ravenous for the last two wickets in the 15 overs that nominally remained—it provided the final pirouette in a contest already dizzy with plot twists.
The draw,
formalised beneath the pall of Durban’s heavy skies at 4.45 p.m., ended
England’s run of eight straight Test victories—a national record stretching
back to May 2004. Yet in preserving their unbeaten calendar year and preventing
the series from dissolving into a one-sided procession, it offered South Africa
more than mere statistical respite; it restored competitive tension.
A Match
Turned by Light and Regulation
When
Matthew Hoggard bruised van Jaarsveld’s edge nine overs before tea, reducing
South Africa to 183 for seven, the script seemed ready for its final line. But
cricket rarely honours neat plotting. Shaun Pollock’s composure and AB de
Villiers’s emerging resilience summoned a 27-over, 85-run partnership that was
valuable less for its arithmetic than for its obstinacy. When Simon Jones’s
direct hit removed Pollock, England sensed the door creaking open. Eleven balls
later the umpires shut it.
The
pre-series playing conditions—stipulating that play must be offered to the
batsmen once artificial light overpowered the natural, an effect described
poetically as *the moment when fielders cast four shadows*—left England with no
recourse. Vaughan, bargaining with frustration, complained only that he had
been denied the chance to deploy his slower bowlers, a tactical avenue forever
lost to the gloom.
England’s
Collapse and South Africa’s Ascent
If South
Africa had “got out of jail,” as Vaughan suggested, England had earlier staged
a jailbreak of their own. Invited to bat first on a surface that offered early
life before flattening, England staggered to 139 all out in less than two
sessions—their poorest first-innings return since the famous Lord’s comeback of
2000. Yet three South African wickets before stumps offered a glimmer amidst
the rubble.
The next morning, the improvised middle order—patched together after injuries to Dippenaar and de Bruyn—buckled. Van Jaarsveld was bowled by Flintoff; Hashim Amla survived in granite-like fashion for 42 minutes before Harmison unleashed a brute of a delivery; de Villiers, temporarily wearing the gloves to accommodate the returning Gibbs, gifted a soft dismissal to mid-wicket.
At 118 for
six, the match hovered in a strange limbo. And then Jacques Kallis, long
stereotyped as a meticulous accumulator, unfurled an innings of rare expressive
authority. His 83 runs across the first two sessions of Day Two were classical,
almost ascetic; the 66 he plundered after tea came from an altogether different
register—fluent, aggressive, almost performative, as though answering critics
who claimed he lacked tempo. Six hours and four minutes at the crease, 264
balls faced, 21 fours struck: it was an epic of application and adaptability.
With the
humidity sapping England’s depleted attack—Ashley Giles absent with a spasming
back—South Africa harvested 214 runs for the final four wickets, establishing a
commanding lead of 193.
The
Counterpunch: England’s Revival Through Strauss and Trescothick
If the
match was a pendulum, the third day marked its most emphatic return swing.
England’s openers survived the brief evening session, then launched one of the
most vivacious Test fightbacks in modern English memory. Across a five-over
burst straddling the drinks break, Trescothick scythed drives and sweeps while
Strauss unfurled his cuts and pulls; together they plundered 50 runs off Boje
and Steyn.
By lunch,
their partnership was 137; by tea, 223. Both reached centuries in consecutive
overs. For Strauss, it was his fourth in nine Tests—a statistical ascent
matched only by Herbert Sutcliffe and Peter Parfitt in English cricket history.
Their partnership reached 273, England’s highest opening stand since Cowdrey
and Pullar’s 290 at The Oval in 1960. The innings crackled with intent,
technique and psychological messaging: England, seemingly buried, had
resurrected themselves.
Thorpe,
Flintoff, and the Anatomy of a Stabilising Stand
Yet the
equilibrium remained fragile. England began the fourth day with a lead of 88,
only to squander three wickets for 33. Such mini-crises are the terrain where
Graham Thorpe thrives. With Flintoff’s disciplined support and Geraint Jones’s
impish enterprise, Thorpe chiselled out his 16th Test century—an innings of
seasoned judgement following his solitary run in the first innings. By the time
England closed on 570 for seven—their third-highest second-innings total in
Test history—the match had been structurally transformed.
South
Africa’s Resistance and the Final Drift Into Darkness
Chasing a theoretical 378, South Africa stumbled early. Smith fell on the fourth evening; by lunch on the final day they were four down after Gibbs and, unexpectedly, Kallis surrendered loose strokes outside off stump. Rudolph and van Jaarsveld temporarily steadied the listing ship, but a burst of three wickets in five overs threatened rupture once again.
Then came
the resistance of de Villiers—crafting a maiden Test fifty—and Pollock, who
together survived nearly two hours. Their defiance did not tilt the match, but
it slowed its descent. And as the clouds thickened, they found an ally in the
failing light. The inevitable consultation followed. The game’s final act
dissolved not in triumph or agony but in ambiguity.
England
concluded their golden year with 11 wins and two draws, denied only by
genius—Brian Lara’s 400*—and now the weather. If this match demonstrated
anything, it was that cricket’s uncertainty is not an accident of nature but a
structural feature of the sport: a reminder that no ascendant power, however
dominant, can fully escape the elements of chance, resistance, and time.
Thank You
Faisal Caesar
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