Anyone seeking peace, quiet and tranquillity yesterday, away from the World Cup and the hurly-burly of Wimbledon, could have done what few others did and forked out £30 and settled down in the stands at Old Trafford.
This was Turgid Day in Turgid Town. At the end of it South Africa had taken advantage of a bleached pitch with the pace of a coal barge and the bounce of a bag of cement to establish the foundations of a total that by this evening should have ensured that England will be catching up for the rest of the match.
South Africa will resume today on 237 for one, having lost the unfortunate Gerry Liebenberg, Adam Bacher's replacement, after 35 minutes of the morning session.
Liebenberg was doubly unfortunate given the way things panned out, for Gary Kirsten and Jacques Kallis batted out the rest of the day of 97 overs (of all the days to exceed the quota of overs they had to pick this one), offering scarcely a smidgeon of encouragement to England bowlers, pace or spin, and setting a record second-wicket partnership for South Africa against England of 212 with, it seems, plenty more where those came from.
Of the two, it was the righthanded Kallis who played the classier innings. Ahead of his partner from the early twenties, he reached only the second century of his 17-match career (his other, 101 against Australia last year, came 10 matches ago) after almost 4 1/2 hours and by the close had reached 117 from 234 balls, with 15 fours, already having played his part in blunting any late threat from the second new ball.
Kirsten, left-handed and unusually obdurate even by South Africa's puritanical standards, came into this match with only 25 runs in the series. But on the back of a double-hundred warm-up knock against the British Universities he played the sort of sheet-anchor role that would have kept a supertanker in check. He batted through the entire six-hour day and was within two runs of his seventh Test hundred when the bails were removed for the day. So far he has faced 88 more deliveries than his partner and hit five fewer boundaries. He would make a fine guest speaker at a convention of insomniacs.
England struggled gamely all day but they might have been toothless bulldogs chewing on a rubber bone for all the impact they had. There was neither extreme pace - Darren Gough was the quickest and the likeliest to take wickets - nor the guile that ought to be associated with spinners. Both Robert Croft and Ashley Giles, making his debut, wheeled through their overs with little variation, save the odd quicker ball on top of a general pace that was too quick to be effective.
Giles, perhaps, can be forgiven for wanting to feel his way into Test cricket, but it seems that Croft has lost confidence, pushing the ball through in a manner that was alien to him when he burst so enthusiastically on to the Test scene. He has bowled 60 overs in the series to date without a wicket.
It was the part-time spinner Mark Ramprakash who managed to look like a slow bowler, with his quickest ball the same pace as Croft's slowest (the speedometer is a godsend for anoraks) but he has not done enough bowling to be able to apply pressure.
There is little doubt, though, that this pitch will help the spinners increasingly as the match progresses. There is negligible grass on the business area, both Croft and Giles managed to beat the outside edge, and Ramprakash once found the shoulder of Kirsten's bat, the ball looping towards short third man.
All the more surprising then that, despite the evidence, South Africa had opted to replace the injured Shaun Pollock with another seam bowler, Makhaya Ntini, rather than bring in their off-spinner Pat Symcox. By the time this game is over, Paul Adams may have whirled himself into a wheelchair.
