LORD’S (fourth day of five): South Africa beat England by an innings and 92 runs
HE IS not the new Ian Botham; but he might yet be the new Gilbert Jessop. Andrew Flintoff has had a career of extraordinary ups and downs since he played his first Test matches as a 20-year-old five years ago. He cut his teeth against South Africa — his first six games were against them at home and away — and yesterday he achieved the extraordinary feat of stealing their thunder just as they were about to celebrate one of their greatest victories.
Driven by the pace of Makhaya Ntini, they got there in the end but a crowd of 21,000, baked all day beneath a blue sky and in most cases steeled for more of the one-way traffic that had started when England threw the game away on the first day and continued while Graeme Smith and Gary Kirsten buried them on the second, left the ground elated by Flintoff’s hitting. Like Ben Travers when Jessop made his match-winning hundred at the Oval in 1902, the English went home to tell their families that they were there when Flintoff hit five sixes and 18 fours. This, however, was an innings in a wholly different context. Jessop hit to win a match; Flintoff to save his side from utter ignominy.
The last time such a thing happened, when England beat New Zealand in the first Test at Christchurch two winters ago, the ferocious hitting of Nathan Astle and Chris Cairns in a last-wicket stand of 118 put so much heart back into a beaten team that the series was eventually drawn. It could happen again, but it would be facile to assume that it will. England, for all the brutal and spectacular hitting of Flintoff in the later stages of his second Test hundred and his highest Test score, were outplayed.
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It was South Africa’s third successive win at Lord’s and only the third innings defeat that England have suffered there. However much better England batted in the second innings than they had when ruining their chances by their impatience in the first, there was no doubt that the game would end with a day to spare once Ntini had taken the wickets of Nasser Hussain and Alec Stewart in three balls yesterday in the last over before lunch.
Hussain, far more composed than he had been the previous evening and leaving Shaun Pollock time and again as he won his battle of patience outside his off stump, had shared with Mark Butcher a partnership of proper determination and increasing assurance. It was hot, the pitch was still true and Butcher, playing straight, was soon timing the ball perfectly. His fluency finally undid him. They had added 126 when Butcher clipped Andrew Hall off his toes in the air to square leg. It brought Anthony McGrath to the wicket with six overs due before lunch and Smith’s decision to give Ntini the last of them effectively settled the issue. Hussain, following instinct, hooked, top edged and became the fifth England batsman in the game to fall mis-hooking a bumper from the same slippery bowler.
Stewart, apparently none the worse for the blow over his left eye on Saturday, played and missed at his first ball from Ntini and edged the second as it bounced and left him. It was fine fast bowling but uncharacteristically tentative batting. When McGrath followed in the first over after lunch, after a not dissimilar ball from Pollock, it became a question only of whether Flintoff could keep his promise to Michael Vaughan to make a hundred.
He was almost Ntini’s sixth hooking victim, a top edge when he had made 15 landing only just short of Paul Adams at deep square leg, but with that piece of fortune behind him he played very well and chose his attacking shots discreetly until working himself towards a cascade of pulls, hooks and drives after tea.
Ashley Giles supported him with his usual staunchness until the new ball was taken at 293 for six and although Darren Gough was in no mood to buckle down, Stephen Harmison and James Anderson, to their credit, both were. The South Africans gathered in a joyous huddle when Flintoff was finally stumped down the leg side off Adams, bowling over the wicket into the rough. Smith has correctly guessed that this would be like Delilah clipping Samson’s hair and so it proved. Thus the last word, like the first, belonged to Smith.