Date-stamped : 05 Jan96 - 02:31 Electronic Telegraph Thursday 4 January 1996 Mark Nicholas sees Martin and Fraser bowl their boots off AT half past four yesterday afternoon it seemed that England, through the virtues of patience and resilience, had worked their way back into the strange and unpredictable Test match that is confusing all who sit beneath Table Mountain to watch it. Michael Atherton, England`s oft-beleaguered captain, will have thought that his bowlers had done him just the job and that he could look forward to an hour or so at the crease in the powerful evening sunshine with the opportunity to build his team a handy little advantage. He would have concluded that, after the sloppy batting of Tuesday, he and the boys had got out of jail. But no: no, no, no. When it mattered most, when the final nail needed hammering home, when England had fresh bowlers and a new ball available they missed the main chance and instead, in a dramatic reversal of fortune, the cool, clerical figure of David Richardson and the chirpy Cape Coloured boy, Paul Adams, put on 73 for the last wicket and gave the game back to their country. As if to add insult to Atherton`s injured heart and mind, Allan Donald convinced the England captain to push fatally outside his off stump and he wandered from the field looking to the sky and thinking, no doubt, "Ye Gods". Ye Gods indeed, for England have had their chances. They won the toss, which seemed imperative, and blew that; then they bowled their boots off and blew that too. Between lunch and tea yester- day South Africa mustered a miserable 38 runs and lost three wickets while they were at it. In all, in a total of 101 overs, England bowled an amazing 34 maidens, using all the best virtues of English professional cricket to suffocate batsmen who appeared petrified to play a stroke. The heroes were the accurate medium pacers, Angus Fraser and Peter Martin, and the fielders who threw themselves this way and that, scrapping for their life and never, which has become the most appealing feature of Atherton`s team, giving up. Fraser has long been miserly; he has based a career on it At the start of this tour Martin was ribbed by his mates for be- ing `Gus`s Ghost`. Gus is Fraser and the ghost is the shadow bowler who, in time - and with performance and luck - might step into the big man`s size 12s and lock up an end for England while Cork and company wheel away with their attacking instinct. "In time" are important words for Fraser, who does not reckon his time has come yet, but he cannot convince the selectors to agree. He was told before this Test - as, incidentally, was Devon Mal- colm - that he would not be required for the one-day matches, so he will fly home on Sunday. Strange way to motivate a man, but Fraser shrugged it off, with the usual grumble no doubt, and went to work. Yesterday, before the storm of the last-wicket stand - and he was not badly affect- ed by that - he bowled 15 overs which included 10 maidens and took the wicket of Jonty Rhodes for a miserly 25 runs. Fraser has long been miserly; he has based a career on it. He scuffs the ground with his flying right boot if you steal a boun- dary from him, hangs his head in disgust if it is his bad bowling that has allowed it. He is hard on himself because he has lofty standards, standards that have become regular, almost commonplace pieces of the Middlesex and England jigsaw. In his pomp, for a couple of years between 1989 and 1991, he was the best bowler of his type in the world and was mentioned in the breath of England`s most complete medium-fast bowler since the war, Alec Bedser. `Gus` made the ball spit at the batsman as if it were dangerous fat from a frying pan; good length; `Gus` land- ed the ball on the seam with such nagging accuracy that batting mistakes were inevitable. Then, in Melbourne, when he was busy capturing six Australian wickets in the first innings of the 1990 Christmas Test, he felt a weakness in his hip that he could not understand. He played on in Adelaide but was below par and then, quite sadly for an Eng- land team who needed him as badly as he needed to play for them, he did not walk onto the international field for a further two years. Martin walks to his mark with his shoulders drooped in the Fraser fashion The hip injury was bad and it threatened his career but, typical- ly, he hung on in there, trained hard and, in the main, kept his spirits high. He has been back now, on and off, for 2.5 years, during which time he took eight for 75 in Barbados on England`s tour of 1994 and helped the underdogs who had previously been steamrollered by the West Indies to a thunderous victory. His effort was a measure of his heart and the absolute reflection of a man who cannot accept defeat. He has been written off by his chairman before and his captain has had to fight for his inclu- sion. It is his captain who understands the burden that Fraser is prepared to carry and who realises the responsibility that Fraser thrives on. He thrived yesterday all right and might have caused more damage had Lady Luck turned his way. The shadow thrived too: Peter Martin, the big Lancastrian with the Fraser lumber and the lugubrious look. His figures were even more impressive than those of his role model as he bowled a mar- vellous spell after lunch and finished the day with nine maidens and the crucial wickets of Darryl Cullinan and Jacques Kallis, also ending the embarrassment by having Adams brilliantly held at slip. Martin walks to his mark with his shoulders drooped in the Fraser fashion. He bowls from a longish run to gather his momentum at the crease and then, from a surprisingly front-on action, manages to get genuine and often late outswing. It is this outswing which has caused South Africa so many problems as he drags their bats away from their bodies and they edge into those safe Jack Russell mitts. Martin arrived on the scene at the start of last summer when he won a limited-overs game against the West Indies with important wickets, which included the ultimate prize of Brian Lara. If his Test career stuttered - remember he was chosen for the `A` tour this winter and was lucky to replace the injured Richard Johnson - the support of the selectors did not and surprisingly they backed him in Durban ahead of, would you believe, Angus Fraser. He took four for 60 and looked the part, and he followed his per- formance in the fractured Durban Test with some tidy, intelligent stuff in Port Elizabeth. Ideally, he would put on a yard of pace and more ideally he would put on a growl of aggression. The pundits who bowl, the likes of Willis, Snow, Procter and Allott, would like to see a tougher, meaner Martin. Martin agrees but does not quite know how to find something so unnatural in so naturally gentle a guy. The answer of course is to ask Fraser, who has made a living from such qualities and who does not plan to relinquish them yet. For the moment Martin can be pleased as Punch with the contribution that he made on an afternoon when England should have cemented their superiority. Source :: Electronic Telegraph (http: www.telegraph.co.uk) Contributed by Shash (shs2@*.cwru.edu)