Ah, the contrast in expectation. Alastair Cook scored 46 yesterday, and will have been mightily disappointed. He had done all the hard work and has now gone 15 Test innings without a century. This is just not his style.
His opening partner, Keaton Jennings, though, would have killed for such a score. Indeed, only two runs more, a far from convincing 48 at the Kia Oval, had kept him in the side for this match.
“The truth is that Jennings has looked awful
Jennings scored 17 this time, making it only 109 runs in seven innings in the series, and you could sense the vultures circling as he trudged off. One of them might even have gone by the name of Haseeb Hameed.
The Lancashire opener was at the ground, doing some work in the nets with Mark Ramprakash, the England batting coach. When the television cameras panned to him, he was ducking and hooking. The short ball has been identified as a potential weakness. Test cricket, especially Ashes Test cricket, will seek that out, so it was wise work.
It is easy to forget that the 20-year-old played three Tests last winter, making some impression, too. His name has slipped out of the frame this summer amid a swirl of technical tinkerings and low scores. It is back now, even though he has not played first-class cricket since the end of June, when he made 17 and 23 in the floodlit County Championship match against Warwickshire.
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He is still averaging 19.45 from seven championship games this season, but he did make a century for Lancashire’s second XI last month and has been playing for Formby in the Liverpool and District competition.
It is hardly compelling stuff but, despite the calls in some quarters for Surrey’s Mark Stoneman to be promoted, it seems reasonable to suggest that Hameed will play another championship match for his county, starting tomorrow against Hampshire, that might well determine whether his Test career is to resume.
Should he make a significant score and Jennings fails again in the second innings, you feel that the selectors will simply be unable to resist the urge to summon Hameed for the first Test against West Indies at Edgbaston, which starts in 12 days’ time.
It could be argued that this will be rather too soft a landing for Hameed as he is hurled back into Test cricket’s bearpit, for West Indies are among the most cuddly of bears, and that Jennings has had to contend with a very good South Africa attack.
But the truth is that Jennings has looked awful. For a former professional, that is a difficult thing to write about a fellow opening batsman who has had to deal with some extremely tricky conditions — and the ball again darted around like a chased buck at Old Trafford in the morning session — but sadly it is true.
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He appears to possess the mental resilience to go away and come again, but for now permanence is a foreign word for Jennings. It is not just that he is failing, it is also that he is being given many a life in doing so.
Every batsman needs to hold the good lady’s lucky hand now and again (indeed he was dropped on nought for his only Test century, in India), but when that is consistently coming to nothing, then it is time to worry.
What’s more, Vernon Philander, who has eaten Jennings for breakfast in this series (and it was not this that gave the South Africa seam bowler a stomach bug at the Oval), was not in attendance. You need to take advantage of such good fortune. Jennings could not. He was off the mark with a clip to fine leg for four in Kagiso Rabada’s first over, but he really should have been on his way to the pavilion the ball afterwards.
Playing that awkward-looking, stiff impersonation of a forward defensive that he uses, he inside-edged on to his front pad and the ball ballooned up. Rabada raced towards it but could not quite hold on to the catch. A short-leg fielder would have caught it with his eyes closed. But for some reason teams seem reluctant to post such a fielder these days, especially early on. Faf du Plessis put a man there just afterwards, but it was too late. That particular horse had bolted and was off into the distance.
But South Africa knew that they could catch him. Jennings was never going to be free for long. He did play one nice front-footed cover drive for four off Duanne Olivier but he was soon edging the same bowler behind. The ball seamed but Jennings made the fatal error of following it with his bat. The rule for a batsman in such circumstances is to keep playing the line and hope that the seam movement misses the bat. Following usually means departing. Jennings followed.
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He is the 11th opening partner Cook has had since the retirement of Andrew Strauss — name that lot and you will be very popular down the pub — and you do wonder whether that has some sort of effect on the great left-hander.
Cook played excellently here and at the Oval against the moving ball, but the match-defining century to which he is so accustomed will not come.
He made it to lunch on 31 and then looked to be accelerating smoothly with a couple of boundaries in one over from Olivier, a drive and a pull, before he suddenly edged the left-arm spin of Keshav Maharaj behind.
Cook was gone. It was a surprise. Unfortunately, Jennings’ demise wasn’t. He has one last chance.