1st Orange Test: Australia v South Africa at Adelaide, 14-18 Dec 2001 John Polack |
South Africa 2nd innings:
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Renowned fighter that he is, number four batsman Jacques Kallis (28*) has bravely attempted to stall Australia’s triumphal charge through another morning blessed by fine weather.
But a disastrous air of collapse at the other end has seen five wickets fall in the opening two hours and gravely compromised his team’s chances of escaping a noose being ever more tightly applied by the Australians.
Having resumed at a perilous 2/17, the South Africans began sliding ever more deeply into the abyss by as early as the first five minutes of the day.
Boeta Dippenaar (0) had experienced an anxious moment in the very first over when he ducked a short delivery from Glenn McGrath (3/11) that barely rose above the height of the off bail behind him. Suitably disconcerted, he responded by edging a low catch to Warne at slip just three McGrath deliveries later.
He will surely be struggling to hold his place ahead of Jacques Rudolph for the next Test of the series.
Only another two deliveries passed before Neil McKenzie (0) was forced to re-enact Dippenaar’s exit from the arena. McGrath cut the ball back in off the seam as the right hander unwisely padded up and incurred the immediate wrath of umpire Srinivas Venkatraghavan for his method of dealing with the delivery.
The height and line of the ball at the point at which he was struck caused McKenzie to look a touch unlucky, though his lack of fortune soon seemed to translate into some fortuitous shaves for Kallis and Lance Klusener (18) as the trend of wicket-taking suffered a lull for close to an hour.
A ducking Klusener involuntarily found a way to direct a Jason Gillespie (2/23) delivery to fine leg off a bat that had been left up like a periscope; Kallis would have been run out at the non-striker’s end if Warne’s deflection of a Klusener straight drive had taken the ball a matter of inches to its right; and there was serial evidence of playing and missing at the leg spin of Warne (2/35) as he found plenty to encourage him in footmarks outside the line of the right hander’s leg stump.
The pair added a positively giddy 33 runs in a fleetingly encouraging association. But, when Gillespie parted them by finding the outside edge of Klusener’s bat before the ball flew to Warne at chest height at slip, the walls quickly came crashing in again.
Mark Boucher (0) lasted only seven minutes before gloving a Gillespie delivery aimed at the hip to wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist.
And, though he survived a king pair, Shaun Pollock (1) couldn’t find a captain’s answer to the crisis either. He succumbed, admittedly, to a magnificent catch – Ricky Ponting thrusting out a right hand diving across from silly point on to the line of the pitch to intercept a defensive shot played off a combination of bat and pad.
Somewhere in the general vicinity of the Channel Nine studio, someone was heard to mutter something about the fact that quite a few things were happening.
The pitch is offering low bounce for the pacemen, as well as fizzing turn for Warne, but is far from poor. To this point, the South African second innings batting has been right at the other end of the scale.
© CricInfo
Date-stamped : 18 Dec2001 - 10:31