Who’s winning?

When I was young I used to ask my dad who was winning the cricket and would get frustrated when he said: “I don’t know yet”. It’s been on for 4 bloody days already, how can you not know who is winning? Then I went to school and played in the under 6 mini cricket side, and slowly started to understand what that meant. I played under 7 too but when time came for the under 8 team, they started using a real cricket ball and the girl inside me said no thanks. But by that time I had a good understanding of just how unpredictable a game it is.

The original 20 over format

The current test between the Proteas and Australia is a perfect example. The Proteas had, what we thought, was a great bowling spell on Wednesday and early Thursday morning. Styen took 4 wickets and we managed to “restrict” the mighty Aussies to just 284. We thought we were winning, then came lunch…

The batsmen walked on the pitch ready to knock the socks of the Australian’s attack, but that was far from how the day progressed. Many C-words were thrown around that afternoon, crumble, crazy, crack and then the dreaded choke. The Proteas were all out for a mere 96, only narrowly avoiding the most embarrassing of cricket faux pars, the follow on, terrible form! Trailing by 188, we were losing, then came tea…

In events that made me wonder if Salman Butt’s bookie, so recently out of a job, had managed to set up a curry shop in Cape Town and have a chat to Pup and the boys, the Australians managed to get their highest score from the 11^th batsman.  Breaking records for all the wrong reasons. At one stage they were 21/9! 21/9! AUSTRALIA for goodness sake! The tailenders managed to snatch up a few runs to bring them to the grand old total of 47.

Help me help you

By this stage I was shaking in my shoes. What had happened to the pitch? Was lunch poisoned? What on earth could possibly come next? Would we get even less than that? I hoped that perhaps due to all of the crazy, they may end play for the day, give everyone a slap, and try again tomorrow.  Were we now winning, who knew? There were still 37 overs scheduled for the day, so back out they all went for round 2.

The Aussies managed to dismiss Rudolf for just 14 runs (incidentally the highest score of their batsmen in their second innings *snigger*) and stress set in. Only 17 of the overs were played and South Africa now sit on 81/1 with a target of 236. I was hoping to be able to catch a tan at Newlands on Saturday and watch a bit of the gentleman’s game, but I don’t see it lasting over day 3.

So who’s winning? I haven’t a fucking clue!