The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Proteas win with plenty to spare

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 13, 2004

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Sport - Cricket

Proteas win with plenty to spare

By Ted Corbett

BIRMINGHAM, SEPT. 12. Even though the Bangladeshis in the crowd cheered loudly every time their team achieved a minor triumph at Edgbaston on Sunday — knocking the ball to third man for a single, for instance — none of them had sore throats at the end of the Pool `B' game against South Africa. Bangladesh lost four batsmen for 20, three batsmen for one in the 22nd and 23rd overs and managed to avoid setting new records in low scores even though it was dismissed for 93 in 31.3 overs.

South Africa won by nine wickets in 17.5 overs and set up a key match in the tournament against West Indies at the Oval on Friday. After a miserable run of form it will be pleased that it won so easily but if those impetuous West Indians can be persuaded to concentrate for more than a few minutes it could be the finest match of the preliminary round.

Bangladesh must have found the conditions alien. In Dhaka the temperature would have been in the middle 30s; here it was 16 at best, with low scudding cloud, a strong breeze and a pitch containing enough juice to aid swing throughout its innings. In the Bangabandhu Stadium they would have had 40,000 voices urging them to greater efforts rather than 500. Add those trying factors to the ruthless superiority of the South Africans and, well, what do you expect.

Bangladesh's 20-year-old captain Rajin Saleh, a controversial appointment after less than a year's international experience, won the toss and, against all the wisdom of local knowledge, decided to bat. I wonder how he will explain that when he phones his parents tonight. By the end of the fourth over he was back in the pavilion for a second ball nought alongside Javed Omar (4), Mohammad Ashraful (4) and Aftab Ahmed (0) so he has had plenty of time to reflect on a weird decision.

Their destroyer was Charl Langeveldt, a 29-year-old quickish swing bowler in only his eighth one-day international. He was called up when Andre Nel broke down in Sri Lanka — so recently that his name is not even in the ICC brochure — and spent his early career mixing cricket and work as a warden at his local jail; which may account for the way he shackled Bangladesh's top batsmen. Langeveldt simply fired the ball down the pitch at a brisk pace around off stump and waited for

the wickets to fall. The result was a Man of the Match analysis of 7-0-17-3, the easiest success of his career inside or outside jail.

When he was rested Nicky Boje spun out the middle order and Makhaya Ntini was too powerful for the tail. Only two Bangladeshi batsmen reached double figures. Nafis Iqbal mixed good luck and bold strokes in equal proportion while the mature and experienced Khaled Mashud gathered 24 from 65 balls, a sedate innings which ended when he was forced to attack in a stand of 13 with the No.11 Nazmal Hossain.

I hate to repeat an obvious truth but Bangladesh — like the multinational USA, Kenya and Zimbabwe — have no place among the tough guys like Australia, South Africa, England and India. It does the game no credit and it may hold up the progress of these minnows by giving them the idea that they have a right to be among the giants of cricket. It is a problem ICC ought to address immediately.

South Africa lost Herschelle Gibbs at 15 but its problem was not scoring 94 to win but passing its target before the storm, which had skirted the edge of Edgbaston from the moment its innings began.

Graeme Smith kept the score moving with typical carved strokes through the offside, Jacques Kallis stood tall to drive through cover — as well as playing a one-handed chop past point — and after only 11 overs it was half way.

Bangladesh's best bowling came from 16-year-old Nazmul Hossain, who bowled six overs for 17 runs before his young captain gave him a rest. If Bangladesh has a future higher up the pile these two may be the building blocks around which the team is built.

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