Alarms ring for Bangladesh, then South Africa on noisy first day at Wanderers
Rabada took five, but Bangladesh managed to score 327/6 on the opening day, their highest total against South Africa, home or away
Joburg is a city alive with as many simultaneously squawking alarms as it has potholes and broken traffic lights. So no-one responded to the squawk sent into Sunday morning’s bright, blustery air when Najmul Hossain Shanto chose to bat first on a Wanderers pitch speckled with spiky green.
The noise grew louder when Mahfijul Islam edged Kagiso Rabada to gully to become the fourth debutant dismissed by the first ball of a Test.
Here’s Kagiso Rabada’s version of what happened courtesy of a press conference: “I was running in and I was like, ‘Not short and wide … Not short and wide.’ And then it landed top of off and nicked him off.”
The alarms whined louder still when Rabada, gliding through his Rolls-Royce gears, had Mominul Haque caught behind and clean bowled Shanto to reduce Bangladesh to 22/3 inside nine overs.
A crescendo surely was approaching with all the grand dame drama of the thunderstorms that visit violence on this place on many summer afternoons.
It never arrived. First Tanzid Hasan and Towhid Hridoy rebuilt with a stand of 99, for a while Bangladesh’s highest for any wicket in South Africa. Then Rabada bowled Tanzid off the edge for 67 and had Mushfiqur Rahim taken at third slip with consecutive deliveries to hurtle to 5/31 in 10.2 overs and send Bangladesh slipping to 121/5. Might someone tap the departing crescendo on the shoulder and ask her to turn around …
Not so fast. Litton Das picked up what Tanzid had laid down to put on 206 with Hridoy, the biggest partnership by any pair of Bangladeshis against South Africa anywhere.
In the early stages of the stand’s careful but solid construction the alarms started squawking ominously close to home. They came from South Africa’s dressing room.
What made some of the Bangladeshis more difficult to bowl to than others?
“The pitch wasn’t as quick off a fuller length as it normally is,” Rabada said. “The short ball wasn’t going through with the venom that we would have liked.
“They got into the channel and played a few balls that, if the pitch was quicker, they would be getting themselves into trouble. But they identified that and they left well when we bowled wider.
“They forced us to go straighter, so they could score on both sides of the wicket. We couldn’t stop it. When momentum is on your side half-chances tend to go your way.”
Tanzid had a succinct answer on how the Bangladeshis not only survived but prospered against one of world cricket’s top performers, who joined Bert Vogler, Allan Donald and Dale Steyn as the only South Africa bowlers to take a wicket with the first ball of a match: “We played the ball, not the bowler.”
Hridoy had batted for a touch more than five hours and faced 194 balls when he swatted Dane Paterson through backward point for four to earn only the second century by a Bangladeshi in South Africa after Mahmudul Hasan Joy’s 137 in Durban in April 2022.
By then the light was as golden as the stuff on which Joburg is built, and the vocal urging of fans for their fellows to down beers drowned out all sounds, alarms included. Save for the increasingly throaty cheers of a 50-strong gaggle of Bangladesh supporters on the grass bank to the west.
Maybe some of them were in Durban more than four years ago, and so they know that as much as Kingsmead and the Wanderers are in the same country they might as well be on different planets in terms of batting conditions. The former is sometimes miscast as a subcontinental pitch. Closer to the truth is that it is among the least South African of surfaces. The Wanderers is the other extreme; the kind of pitch that makes others blush.
Score a century at Kingsmead and you’ve done well. Score a century at the Wanderers — particularly on the first day, against bowlers of the calibre of Rabada and Marco Jansen — and you’ve defied the laws of physics and insulted the mores of common decency into the bargain. How bloody dare you?
Hridoy dared. As did Litton, who was 92 not out at stumps. They hammered 136 runs in the 27 overs between tea and the arrival of the second new ball, which was taken immediately it was due.
Even that didn’t look like doing the trick. Why not?
“The Wanderers is not an easy place to bowl,” Rabada said. “If you miss your length, either short or full, you can get punished. And I don’t think we bowled in partnerships as well as we would have liked to.
“That’s what you need to do here. Perhaps we let them off the hook here and there and didn’t string together enough dots or enough wicket-taking balls, especially with the old ball.
“But, hey, that’s how it goes in cricket. I wouldn’t say we’re happy with that. But we’re in the position we are in right now and we’ve got to fight.”
Jansen speared the 24th delivery with the new nut full into Hridoy’s pads to trap him in front for the same score Mahmudul made at Kingsmead.
But a new record was indeed minted: Bangladesh’s 327/6 is their highest total against South Africa, home or away. If some of this sounds familiar it’s because Australia were 124/6 — three runs more and one wicket fewer than Bangladesh on Sunday — and in the first Test at Kingsmead last month, and wriggled off the hook to total 390 and win by 214 runs.
“It was a similar position here [to Durban],” Rabada concurred. “We’ll have a look in more detail and more depth why this keeps happening. This is the most sporty pitch we’ve played on [this season] that can suit our type of bowling. But we have to adapt if conditions are not fully in our favour. It’s something that we’re going to have to look at with that older ball. I don’t have the answers right now. We need to be more ruthless.”
What’s that sound? Just another squawking Joburg alarm.
