SOUTH AFRICA TOUR OF ENGLAND 2025
In the past 12 months alone, men’s international cricket had to put up with four dead rubbers in Tests, a dozen in ODIs and 32 in T20Is ©Getty
With apologies to The Everly Pregnant Brothers – and thus also to The Specials – here’s a message to you, Rooty: your 19th ODI century should be struck from the record. Or be qualified by an asterisk that explains you scored it in a match of diminished status; in a friendly, not a fully-fledged ODI.
The game in question was between England and South Africa in Southampton on Sunday, when Joe Root scored 100. Jacob Bethell made 110 in the same match – his first hundred as a professional – and Jamie Smith and Jos Buttler scored mere half-centuries in England’s total of 414/5; their highest against South Africa. Jofra Archer took three wickets for one run on his way to figures of 4/18 as the visitors crashed to 72 all out – their second-lowest score against anyone – in 20.5 overs.
All of which should be expunged from the annals.
As should Codi Yusuf’s wicketless 10 overs that bled 80 runs, the most expensive figures recorded by a men’s South Africa player on ODI debut. The ducks suffered by Aiden Markram and Wiaan Mulder should also be erased.
Along with England’s 342-run triumph – the biggest victory, in runs terms, in all 4,906 men’s ODIs yet played.
Why? Because England didn’t win a proper game. They won a charade, a farce, an eye-rolling exercise, a going through of the motions, an unfunny joke denuded of a punchline.
It’s time to kill what isn’t for nothing called the dead rubber. Put the damned thing to death already. Doing so would, for a start, ease an ever more cluttered playing schedule.
In the past 12 months alone, men’s international cricket had to put up with four dead rubbers in Tests, a dozen in ODIs and 32 in T20Is. Thirty-two! Without that little lot, up to 64 days could have been taken out of the gorged global roster in the space of a year. More, in fact, when we add travel and training time.
The 48 unnecessary matches produced 16 centuries and eight five-wicket hauls, two of which became 10-wicket hauls. All of those performances should be considered fraudulent because they weren’t achieved in properly competitive matches.
South Africa won by seven wickets at Headingley on Tuesday and by five runs at Lord’s on Thursday. That ended the series as a contest. By all that is logical, the series itself should have ended. Sadly, madly, badly it did not.
The same sorry thing happened in Australia last month, when South Africa won the first ODI in Cairns by 98 runs and the second in Mackay by 94 runs to seal the series – which lumbered zombie-like to a third, irrelevant match, also in Mackay, which Australia won by 276 runs.
Both of the unfortunate, unnecessary third ODIs were stiff with awkwardness. As if all concerned – players and spectators alike – knew they were party to fakery. Cricketers are viscerally competitive creatures. To force them to play games that don’t matter is an insult. Can it be far from a form of fixing?
Asked at a press conference after Sunday’s debacle whether the fact that the series had been decided before the match helped explain his team’s dismal display, Shukri Conrad said: “Any excuse is better than none. We were definitely off today. And against a top side like England when you’re not on top of your game you do get exposed the way we did. A similar thing happened in Australia. After we went 2-0 up, in a complete aberration they scored [431/2].
“So there must be some truth in that. If we’re going to be poor, we’d rather be poor in games that aren’t clutch games. But I’m not making light of today’s defeat. That was slightly embarrassing.”
In the WTC era, there is an argument to be made that fewer Tests are utterly dead rubbers. But the same era has bequeathed more white-ball World Cups of one sort or the other than ever before, which reduces all bilateral series to warm-ups for tournaments. Consequently the value of winning a series has plummeted. Even live rubbers are not much more important than their dead equivalents.
All that said, there is a mitigating factor. Before the ODI circus rolled into town the cricketminded folk of Mackay had never seen a men’s Australia team of any format up close and personal at their strikingly named Great Barrier Reef Arena. The Rose Bowl had hosted England’s men’s team before Sunday, but not since the rain-affected and drawn Test against Pakistan in August 2020.
Even so, it’s not as if the suits have the interests of their further flung audiences at heart when they compile fixture lists. Rather, and predictably, money is what matters. The broadcast rights and sponsorship agreements that keep boards afloat must be fulfilled, come hell, high water, empty stands or dead rubbers. So the match doesn’t matter. So what? As long as it’s rolling across a screen festooned with logos, we’re all good.
Except we’re not. Temba Bavuma left the field on Sunday with a strained calf. In 35 days’ time, South Africa will start their defence of the WTC title they won by beating Australia by five wickets at Lord’s in June. As South Africa’s captain and the scorer of a vital 66 in the second innings of that match, Bavuma was central to his country’s greatest triumph on a cricket ground. Doubtless he will be important in their quest to retain the mace.
But he might not recover from his latest injury – there have been depressingly many – in time to take the field in Lahore on October 12.
And that because of what happened in a match that should never have been played.
Should Bavuma miss out, maybe The Everly Pregnant Brothers could come up with a song to capture his plight. The group are billed as the north of England’s “premier parody ukulele band”. In November 2015 they turned The Specials’ “A Message to You, Rudy” into a tribute to Joe Root – who, like them, is from Sheffield. Indeed, Root has appeared, ukulele in hand, on stage with the band to play the song.
Here’s a flavour of the lyrics: “Stop your fooling around. You’ve had the Aussies pants down. Get on lash with Flintoff, just don’t wind up in jail. A message to you, Rooty!”
Sheffielders are colloquially and fondly known as dee-dars, a nod to their accent. Dee-dar is also the sound made by ambulance sirens. There’s a song for Bavuma in there somewhere, surely.
A suggested first verse: “When you’re weary, feeling small. When tears dee-dar in your eyes, I will dry them all. I’m on your side, when times get rough. And friends just can’t be found. Like a bridge over troubled Temba…”
© Cricbuzz
