CRICKET: There was to be no magical start for Michael Vaughan yesterday. No dream day of captain's runs and inspiration in the field to delight a crowd buzzing with the anticipation of what the new broom might bring. Mike Selvey reports from Lord's.
Instead, after an England batting display every bit as dismal as had been the bowling at Edgbaston, he stood at mid-off, as promised, powerless as Graeme Smith and Herschelle Gibbs ran riot once more. Already, this looks a game beyond England's winning and one they will do well to save.
So much time is being spent in each other's company in the middle by the South African openers that it is starting to look not so much a partnership as a relationship. Tongues will wag.
In the final session they added 133, the third time they have passed three figures in only 12 innings together before Gibbs chopped Steve Harmison on to his wicket when one run shy of his half century. It was nothing to match the 368 they added against Pakistan in Cape Town, or the 338 England endured in the last match at Edgbaston, but these are now established, along with Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer, as a partnership from the top echelons.
In Birmingham it was the early, tempestuous strokeplay from Gibbs that kick-started things. Yesterday though, Smith, badly dropped by Nasser Hussain at cover when on eight, took on the role of aggressor, reaching 80 with 12 fours and taking his total for the series to 442 in only his third innings.
With Gary Kirsten already taking root, South Africa, at 151 for one, know they need just 22 more runs to leave England in their slipstream.
Well as Shaun Pollock and Andrew Hall, in particular, bowled, England were pathetic. They had been put into bat by Smith but it was marginal - Vaughan would have taken first knock; the South African captain had not made up his mind even as the coin was rolling to a stop - and certainly, while there was thin cloud cover and a little lateral movement consistent with the first morning of a Test, competent batting until lunch should have seen England through to easier times in the afternoon.
Instead, by the time the 38th over was through, England had made just 118 and their last pair, Darren Gough and James Anderson, were at the crease. That they were able to add 55 for the last wicket, the highest stand of the innings, with Gough top scoring with 34, was merely illustration of what might have been.
The South African success carried a wider perspective, however, and it begins in the huts of Mdingi in rural Eastern Cape, where Makhaya Ntini, as a young barefoot herder, dreamed of cricket and its spiritual home, Lord's.
In the dressing-rooms in the pavilion at cricket's headquarters there are honours boards that record the great Test match deeds of batsmen and bowlers. "I've never played a Test there," Ntini has said. "My wish is to make sure I leave my name on one of those boards - five for something, anything." Well Ntini got his wish yesterday. When he took his fifth wicket by knocking back Harmison's off-stump, the emotion of his team-mates as they mobbed him, each of them knowing the implications for the development of the game in their country, was there for all to see.
Guardian Service
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