Ken Borland

South Africa rushed to victory by an innings and 12 runs as their combination of brilliant fast bowling and the beguiling spin of Keshav Maharaj saw England bundled out for 149, 20 minutes before tea on the third day at Lord’s on Friday.

England began their second innings an hour before lunch, trailing by 161 runs, and a brutal wake-up call for Brendon McCullum’s team was completed in 37.4 overs.

The innings will be remembered for the blistering fast bowling of Anrich Nortje, who ripped through the middle-order with three wickets in two overs. The quick-scoring Jonny Bairstow was a key dismissal, caught behind for 18, edging a beautiful delivery that was angled in and nipped away just outside off-stump.

Nortje then had dogged opener Alex Lees (35 off 83 balls) and Ben Foakes also caught by tidy wicketkeeper Kyle Verreynne in his next over.

But it was Maharaj who began the rout with two wickets before lunch.

Captain Dean Elgar’s decision to bring the spinner into the attack after just seven overs, even though new-ball bowlers Lungi Ngidi and Kagiso Rabada looked likely to take a wicket imminently, will be considered a masterstroke as Maharaj trapped both Zak Crawley (13) and Ollie Pope (5) lbw.

Ngidi has bowled beautifully in this Test match with scant reward, but he will be delighted that his one wicket was a major one as he had Joe Root caught in the slips for just 6. It will be a long time since Root has managed just 14 runs in a Test.

Rabada returned to claim the wickets of Stuart Broad (35) and Ben Stokes (20) and Marco Jansen wrapped up the thumping win with a couple of wickets as well.

But it was Nortje who most rattled England with some of the fastest bowling seen in the UK for many years. It must be remembered too how well he batted on Friday morning, scoring 28 not out, a fighting innings that saw him unleash some memorable strokes.

The lower-order produced crucial runs to bump up South Africa’s lead after Stokes had inspired a collapse to 210 for six on the second evening. But Jansen and Maharaj (41) turned the momentum by adding 72 runs in 12-and-a-half overs and Jansen, with Nortje’s help, scored a career-best 48 to lift the Proteas to 326 all out.

Kagiso Rabada would be your first choice of current South African bowlers to get up on the Lord’s honours board and he duly completed his five-wicket haul before the Proteas openers did their job on the second day of the first Test against England on Thursday.

Rabada bowled superbly in the first hour of the morning session, finishing with five for 52 in 19 overs as England were bowled out for just 165.

Captain Dean Elgar (12*) and Sarel Erwee (13*) then took South Africa through to 27 without loss at lunch.

England had resumed on a struggling 116 for six after the Proteas pacemen had dominated the 32 overs able to be played on the first day before rain washed out play. Ollie Pope was the key man for them on 61 not out, but the determined No.3 was the first batsman to fall on Thursday, in the fifth over of the day.

Erwee’s juggling attempt to catch Pope at first slip at the end of the first over of the day, bowled by Rabada, failed, but the batsman only added six more runs. Rabada kept plugging away with great control and skill just outside the off-stump, and Pope then inside-edged a big drive into his stumps to be bowled for 73.

A beautiful slower ball then accounted for Stuart Broad (15) and Rabada wrapped up his 12^th five-wicket haul in his 73^rd Test by trapping Jimmy Anderson lbw for a first-ball duck.

In between the dismissals of Broad and Anderson, Marco Jansen chipped in by bowling Jack Leach for 15.

Left-armer Jansen finished with two for 30 in eight overs and Anrich Nortje was also wonderful on the first day, finishing with three for 63 in 13 overs.

Some exquisite swing bowling by Anderson and Broad then created plenty of nervous moments for South Africa, and Elgar was dropped on seven by Zak Crawley at second slip off Matthew Potts, his angled-bat weakness outside off stump again coming to the fore.

But the opener survived the testing 12 overs before lunch.

The last month in England has produced never-seen-before scenes in Test cricket as the team representing the home of the stiff upper lip and historically often dominated by dour Yorkshiremen and Lancastrians, have pulled off four successive fourth-innings run-chases with all the dash and aggression of a limited-overs game.

England have chased down four targets in excess of 250, the first team in the history of Test cricket to do so in a calendar year, and they have done so extraordinarily quickly. Traditional Test logic is that scoring anything more than 250 in the fourth innings is never easy, but England have won by seven wickets twice and by five wickets twice in beating New Zealand 3-0 and now levelling their postponed series against India 2-2.

Their run-rates in those innings have been 4.93 chasing 378 against the powerful India attack, and 3.53, 5.98 and 5.44 against the New Zealand bowling line-up that won the World Test Championship last year.

These extraordinary achievements have come under the refreshing new positive philosophy of coach Brendan McCullum and captain Ben Stokes. It has been called BazBall in honour of the Kiwi-born coach, but it is also a reflection of how captain Stokes, one of the great all-rounders, has always tried to play the game.

Having seen off the two teams that played in the inaugural World Test Championship final, England are now heading into a series against South Africa, currently second in the standings.

Many critics will be tempted to write off the Proteas as having no chance, but let’s not forget they beat India in a series at the start of the year and then drew with the Black Caps in New Zealand. And South Africa have a history of taming teams that have set out to play ultra-aggressively against them, thanks to their perennially strong bowling attacks.

Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje are amongst the fastest bowlers in the world, and left-armer Marco Jansen is an exciting prospect who could surprise the English.

But it could be an unfamiliar strength that the Proteas turn to: In Keshav Maharaj and Simon Harmer, South Africa have two world-class spinners and, with the pitches in England starting to dry out and take turn in August, their contest with the mighty English batting order should be memorable.

Batsmen in the current IPL have bravely gone where no batters have gone before in hitting more than one-thousand sixes in the current competition, and Proteas captain Temba Bavuma is hoping his batsmen can play with similar freedom when South Africa play a T20 series in India next month.

The one-thousand sixes barrier was broken for the first time in the IPL in the final league stage match of 2022 on May 22, the previous most maximums in a season being the 872 scored in 2018.

“I’ve really enjoyed being off from cricket for the last four weeks, so I have not watched all the IPL, but the one thing I have seen is that there have been a lot more sixes hit – more than a thousand,” Bavuma said at a Castle Lager launch in Tembisa on Wednesday.

“As a bowler, you’re probably scared to see that, but you’re smiling as a batsman. It means our bowlers will need to be a lot smarter, but for the batsmen, the pitches are good.

“Our batsmen can really go out and express themselves. Our game doesn’t need to change too much, but to have power-hitters like David Miller and Tristan Stubbs teaming up together in the middle would be incredible.

“They could be a potent partnership. David smashed the lights out yesterday to get Gujarat Titans in the final, Quinton de Kock bashed it around the other night and Kagiso Rabada has been brilliant as well,” Bavuma said.

While Stubbs will be fighting with the likes of Heinrich Klaasen and Reeza Hendricks for the one batting spot that could be open, Bavuma is backing the 21-year-old to make his mark on his first call-up to the Proteas squad.

“It’s nice to see young new faces in the team and we’ve been on the receiving end of Tristan’s batting a number of times at the Lions. We’ll try to make the environment as comfortable as we can for him.

“He’s a young guy so he also has the opportunity to learn a lot from the older guys in the team. He’ll have guys around him to make his transition to international cricket as smooth as possible.

“Hopefully he can soak it all in because international cricket is different to the IPL or domestic T20. Hopefully he can really take his career forward.

“We have a couple of guys in really good form from the IPL, but we expect it to be a tough series. India are always very competitive and we’ve seen some of their guys have a very good IPL as well,” Bavuma said.