It should be a given to talk about Mark Gillespie today, right? About him taking a five-fer, about him waltzing over the South African batsmen, and about him getting New Zealand into a surprisingly excellent position before lunch.
Instead, the Black Caps being the Black Caps, I am again left complaining about yet another (though hardly surprising) batting collapse, yet another failure of the NZ top order, yet another wasted opportunity to not just make up for the disastrous first innings, but to set themselves up to even win this Test match.
Nicol was unlucky, but the dismissals of Guptill, McCullum and Taylor were all once more either poorly selected or poorly executed shots from batsmen who should know better. Williamson (42*), Vettori (0*) and van Wyk (dnb) could score some more runs and build up a bit of a lead, but New Zealand are already 4 wickets down and still trail by 3 runs.
And a day's play wouldn't be a proper day's play without me complaining about NZ media again, with them claiming that South Africa's first innings was a success for the Black Caps, because the wicket looked very easy to bat on in the morning, and South Africa were unable to get a really big score. What they all failed to acknowledge was the fact that New Zealand already had them 88-6 down at lunch.
Regardless of the individual brilliance of a certain Abraham de Villiers, never ever should the Proteas have been allowed to bring their total up to 253. Philander's quite good with the bat, fine, but usually Morkel and Tahir are the type of players whom you feel you have to tell how to hold a bat. How and by whom were they granted 65 runs between them?
It appears as if this Test is going to be remembered rather as a batting failure parade than for great bowling. That allegedly super green wicket's browned off so quickly our heads spun (no pun intended), and while we should commend the bowlers for their efforts on a wicket that didn't offer them anything, we can only blame overall shoddy batting for the number of wickets that have fallen on this slightly hectic Day 2.
At the end of the day, you can take wickets all you want - they mean nothing if your batsmen don't score runs as well. Cricket can be so simple sometimes, can it not?
It appears as if this Test is going to be remembered rather as a batting failure parade than for great bowling. That allegedly super green wicket's browned off so quickly our heads spun (no pun intended), and while we should commend the bowlers for their efforts on a wicket that didn't offer them anything, we can only blame overall shoddy batting for the number of wickets that have fallen on this slightly hectic Day 2.
At the end of the day, you can take wickets all you want - they mean nothing if your batsmen don't score runs as well. Cricket can be so simple sometimes, can it not?
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