South Africa strike back as Root holds key for England

England 147 for 4 (Root 34*, Stokes 1*) v South Africa
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Jennings’ torrid Test series continues

South Africa hit back with three key wickets after lunch on the first day of the fourth Investec Test, leaving Joe Root and the new arrival, Ben Stokes, in a battle to retain the upper hand after two intriguing sessions at Old Trafford. England went to the break on 147 for 4, with Root embedded on 34, and Stokes off the mark to the final ball of the session from Keshav Maharaj, whose unbroken spell from the Brian Statham End had enabled Faf du Plessis to rotate his seamers from the newly christened James Anderson End.

With four minutes to go until tea, the ploy paid off. After sharing in an attritional fourth-wicket stand of 52, Dawid Malan was lured into a fateful slash outside off, after Morne Morkel had cleverly switched his line to the left-hander from round the wicket to over. Suddenly balls that had been bearing into his body were being dangled across his bows, and it was too much of a temptation for a man whose first international innings had been 78 from 44 balls. Du Plessis took the chance in his breadbasket, and Malan stalked from the field, swishing his bat in annoyance.

After several days of the most stereotypically grim Mancunian weather imaginable, the match managed not only to get underway on time, but also avoid any interruptions save for an unfortunate ten-minute interlude when a spectator was taken ill in the stands. It had been a testing decision for Root to bat first after winning the toss, however, under heavy cloud and on a surface that, though ostensibly dry, could hardly have avoided absorbing a considerable amount of moisture in its preparation.

And sure enough, England found the going tough from the outset, even in the absence of the one South Africa bowler most likely to have thrived in the seam-and-swing conditions. After battling through illness in the third Test at The Oval, Vernon Philander succumbed to a back spasm on the eve of the match, as did another valued member of their fast-bowling stocks, Chris Morris – whose pace and aggression had been instrumental in their second-Test fightback at Trent Bridge last month.

But with Morkel and Kagiso Rabada in harness with the new ball, hammering out an edge-threatening line and length to England’s brace of left-handed openers, such gaps in South Africa’s ranks were far from the forefront of Alastair Cook’s and Keaton Jennings’ minds.

Jennings, whose 48 in the second innings at The Oval had been a streaky but valuable reminder of his battling qualities, once again failed to dispel the gathering doubts about his Test aptitude with a battling but unfulfilled innings of 17 from 37 balls that nevertheless counts as his fifth-highest score in 11 Test innings. After cashing in on a brace of wayward deliveries from the recalled Duanne Olivier, he was lured forward by a sharp delivery outside off, for Quinton de Kock to take the catch that ended an opening stand of 35.

However, Jennings could and perhaps should have been dismissed by his fourth ball of the match. Having clipped Rabada sweetly off his pads for his first boundary of the innings, he was trapped in no-man’s land by the follow-up, and inside-edged a ballooning catch off the pad flap that Rabada hared after in his followthrough but couldn’t quite snaffle.

A short-leg would have gobbled the chance with his eyes closed, but it was a position that Faf du Plessis steadfastly refused to fill, with the seamers’ full lengths persuading him to keep his slip cordon stacked instead.

Cook, true to his phlegmatic approach, was tested time and again in the channel outside off but managed through a combination of skill, luck and judgment to avoid any that exploded off the deck past his edge. His most productive scoring area, unusually for the first morning of a Test match, was straight down the ground, where he placed two fractionally overpitched deliveries from Morkel and Olivier with dead-eyed timing.

Cook did have one moment of discomfort against the sharp pace of Rabada, who hurried him on the pull as he combatted a round-the-wicket bouncer, and gloved a top-edge over the keeper’s head for four. Tom Westley, his Essex team-mate who once again looked composed in his third Test innings, likewise had a technical let-off on 15, when he flashed hard and uppishly over the slip cordon to pick off a streaky four against Olivier.

South Africa stuck to their task in the helpful conditions, and never allowed England’s run-rate to get out of hand. They suffered another momentary injury scare when Keshav Maharaj, their left-arm spinner, left the field for treatment, seemingly on a dodgy hamstring. Though Theunis de Bruyn, Morris’s allrounder replacement, provided Cook with a few dicey moments with his wobbling medium pace, Mahajah was back on the field and bowling before the end of the session, even beating Westley with a beauty in the final over.

And sure enough, it was Maharaj who made the next big breakthrough, half an hour after the resumption, when his relentless accuracy on and around the blockhole, allied to a hint of spin and natural variation, lured Cook into the indiscretion that the seamers had been unable to tempt. Harnessing the breeze across the ground, Maharaj drifted the ball past an urgent drive for de Kock to gather a thin edge behind the stumps. Cook was gone for 46 from 103 balls, an innings that almost precisely represented both his career average (46.18) and strike rate (46.77). Distinctly average by his standards, therefore, but a cut above what players would have produced in such conditions.

As if to prove the point, four overs ticked by without addition to the score before Westley too was extracted – his 29 echoing his 25 in his debut innings at The Oval last week, in that it had showcased a Test-worthy technique and temperament, but had been cut short before it had fully formed. This time the executioner was Rabada, and in dramatic style. Cranking himself up to full pace and ferocity, he burst a lifting delivery off the edge and into the outstretched right mitt of de Kock. A brilliant dismissal though it was, the keeper arguably made up in athleticism and Kodak moments what he had lacked in his initial footwork, as he dived fully to his right to gather the flying edge.

Malan, who had been detonated from the crease by Rabada’s delivery of the match in the third Test, looked understandably anxious as he joined his skipper, Root, still on 0, and he almost departed first ball too, as he whooshed into a hard-handed drive to another exocet outside off. But Malan steadied his nerves and remembered his arena, eventually getting off the mark from his tenth delivery with a calm glide into the covers off Maharaj, one ball before Root did likewise – from his 16th – with a whistling drive through the covers.

But Rabada remained the principal threat and, having found Root’s outside edge with another flyer that eluded the cordon as well as his inside edge with two induckers that might otherwise have been prime lbw candidates, he came within a whisker of making the big breakthrough, as Root, on 19, was trapped on the crease and saved only by the width of the bails, as du Plessis opted for a review, only for Aleem Dar’s initial not-out to be upheld.

Prior to the start of play, a presentation was made to James Anderson in front of the Pavilion to mark the official naming of the end which now commemorates the most successful Mancunian Test bowler in history. It remains to be seen whether Anderson feels obliged to open the bowling from said End when England’s turn comes to bowl.

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Source: ESPN Crickinfo