Johannesburg — Dean Elgar is by his own admission a ‘bat first’ captain.
He wanted to bat at Lord’s last week after winning the toss, and said despite advice from the coaching staff to bowl, he still had to fight with himself before following their advice.
Having won the toss again on Thursday, Elgar went with his first instinct, despite the cloudy overhead conditions, and the fact that his team’s strength is its fast bowling and England’s top order is fragile.
The South African captain’s mind was in part also made up by the composition of his team, that included Simon Harmer, in place of Marco Jansen, with the brainstrust determining that the Old Trafford surface was dry and would aid spin.
However the decision at the toss exposed South Africa’s flaky batting line-up that features an inexperienced player at three, whose confidence looks a bit low, while Aiden Markram at No 4 and Rassie van der Dussen one place lower, are in the midst of a protracted run of poor form.
When Elgar won the toss in the second Test against New Zealand in Christchurch earlier this year, his decision to bat also caught many by surprise. South Africa had been bowled out for 95 and 111 the previous week, but Elgar based his decision then on wanting his batters to be more self assured.
Alongside the composition of the starting team, that is likely what he had in mind on Thursday also, but this England attack is better than the New Zealand one.
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The Proteas’s top order would have known that the first session would be difficult, but it really was the stuff of nightmares as they went to lunch with half of the batting order dismissed
Elgar and opening partner Sarel Erwee fell victim to some good planning and execution from Stuart Broad and James Anderson respectively.
However ill-judgement from Keegan Petersen, a dreadful mess of pull shot from Markram and some misfortune, courtesy of a very generous umpiring decision that went against Van der Dussen, gifted England more than they could have dreamed of.
Markram came into the series with doubts about his form, but Elgar backed his experience over Ryan Rickelton’s good form.
At Lord’s he was dismissed, prodding at an innocuous delivery from Jack Leach and Thursday, he top edged a short ball that even the bowler, Ben Stokes thought was lousy. Yet at times during his innings of 14 — as was the case at Lord’s — there were signs of his elegant talent. He played a couple of lovely drives, and the need to be authoritative is understandable both from a personal view and the perspective of the team.
But it's not happening for Markram and it hasn’t for a long time. After the outstanding start to his Test career that saw him score four hundreds in his first 10 matches and led to forecasts for a great career, Markram has sadly fallen away. There were problems against spin, which he’d seemingly solved in Pakistan last year, but since his last hundred, which came on that tour, he’s had problems outside his off-stump and was on the brink of getting dropped, until first Petersen’s absence because of Covid-19 in New Zealand and then Temba Bavuma’s elbow injury which left the vice captain out of the England tour, provided another opportunity.
Now Markram has just the second innings of this Test to save his Test career.
Elgar would have been frustrated with how the day unfolded after lunch. The sun came out, the pitch eased, the ball softened and a 35-run ninth wicket partnership between Kagiso Rabada, who top scored with 36, and Anrich Nortje, indicated that had there been less damage in that first session, his decision at the toss wouldn’t have looked as bad as 151 all out suggests it does.
The bowlers shipped out three wickets in a sunny final session, but even though England trail by 40 runs it feels like they are well ahead in the match.
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