Cricket/First Test: After four days of generally modest cricket by their new standard, England duly won the first Test yesterday morning with no further loss and, with thunder rumbling around, at a considerable and necessary canter.
The seven-wicket victory, a wider margin than perhaps they deserved, gives Michael Vaughan's side eight wins in a row, unprecedented for an England side, and leaves South Africa with a case of post-traumatic Strauss disorder.
The remarkable rise of Andrew Strauss from county stalwart to one of the world's leading opening batsmen in little more than six months shows no sign of abating.
Unbeaten on 51 overnight, he so dominated the remainder of an unbroken fourth-wicket partnership of 95 with Graham Thorpe that the square cut off Makhaya Ntini that finished the match left him unbeaten on 94, to add to his 126 of the first innings.
"How do you cope with him?" South Africa's captain, Graeme Smith, was asked after the game.
"Keep him away from Port Elizabeth," was the smiling reply.
While Strauss expanded his CV, Thorpe, the indefatigable finisher, just leaned on his bat at the other end, nudged a single here or there, biffed an off-spinner through the covers for a solitary boundary and added eight more runs himself. It is an experienced player who knows when to let the super trouper shine on someone else. In all it took 36 minutes and 58 balls to polish off the 49 runs required.
Strauss' batting, in contrast with that of his team-mates, was exemplary, a further five boundaries added yesterday to the seven he had already hit, as well as a six pulled with time to spare as the young paceman Dale Steyn dropped only fractionally short. His 220 runs in this game means that in an eight-Test career he has scored 810 at an average of 57.85, the only England batsman currently to top 50 per innings.
With a further 190 runs in Durban next week he would equal Herbert Sutcliffe's England record of nine matches to 1,000 Test runs. Only Donald Bradman, with seven, has done it faster, and only Everton Weekes and George Headley have been as quick.
It is a scintillating prospect he will play down with the same determination as he does a Shaun Pollock bouncer. But if it sounds a tall order, do not put it past him: he plays with courage, skill, nerve, sheer enjoyment and an unquenchable appetite for runs.
The extension of Vaughan's personal achievement as captain to 14 wins and only three losses out of 20 matches means that a dent has been made in South Africa's proud home record that has seen them lose eight of 58 previous matches since readmission to international cricket, and only three times - to New Zealand, Pakistan and, in the crooked Centurion Test, to England - to sides other than Australia. In that time, only the Australians and the Kiwis have won the first Test of a series here.
Whatever happens to them abroad they are fanatical about preserving their self-esteem at home. Smith puts on an impressive front and will talk up the prospects of a comeback in the second Test, but this England win will leave some considerable damage on a side in transition and turmoil.
Yet England's win, of a kind that once would have been greeted with the loudest of hosannas, can now be assessed more realistically in the light of what they have achieved in the past year. High standards are expected of the side ranked second in the world. A benchmark has been set and in this game, at times, they fell significantly short.
In this regard, the captain - and presumably coach - recognise the shortcomings in the game that saw a potentially disastrous middle-order collapse, some poor shot selection and the worst performance in more than a year from the world's leading fast bowler.
However, it is simply not enough to point a finger at the result and glibly suggest that the preparatory means justified the end. England came in to this match under-prepared in a competitive sense, ring-rusty, and Vaughan's steadfast defence that their single-match build-up was spot-on fools no one.
You cannot describe part of the performance as "shoddy" and say that the ball is "not coming out of Steve Harmison's hand as he would like" and palm it off as a mental thing. It is not a mental thing that disorientates Steve Harmison's radar, it is a lack of match bowling and, in trying to protect his longevity, they have done him and themselves a disservice.
The truth is England winged it into this game, probably held their breath and let out a collective gasp of relief when it was over. We should all salute one of the outstanding achievements in English Test history, acknowledge Strauss and the fire of Simon Jones that took the game away from the home side on the fourth afternoon, recognise that they lost an important toss and still won comfortably, but temper it with the knowledge the South Africans suffered with the umpiring and contributed substantially to their own downfall by giving away extras as if it were a jumble sale.
Guardian Service
