ALEX PARKER
The Times cricket columnist
AFTER the joy of South Africa’s Test series win in Australia, you could almost feel the tension ease in cricketing circles.
The utterly crocked captain Graeme Smith flew home to a well-deserved hero’s welcome. Not only did he have a series win Down Under in his luggage, but also the heartfelt respect of a sporting nation that is notoriously hard to win over.
And so, after the headliners, the support act. One-day cricket seemed almost irrelevant after all the Test drama.
But this particular series has significance, not least because the return series starts in barely a month’s time. South Africa’s victory will be a hammer-blow to Australia’s confidence. They started this series as world champs in both forms of the game.
Now South Africa have finished with them, not even the most dyed-in-the-wool Bruce could argue that.
South Africa and Australia were both one-day sides in a stage of flux, and it is the South Africans who have done better on all levels, be it batsmen, bowlers or selectors.
Much praise will quite rightly be heaped upon a stubbornly resurgent Herschelle Gibbs, who yesterday continued his form with a blitzkrieg opener’s innings of 38 from 29 balls. It’s a score that won’t attract comment in 50 years as people scan the Wisden, but what it did was suck the wind out of Australia’s sails and gave the sublime Hashim Amla the space he needed.
While the batsmen did well and will hog the headlines, the man who has had a quietly monumental series is Johan Botha, the stand-in skipper.
It must have been tough to fill Smith’s shoes after that career-defining moment at the SCG when he walked out to bat with broken bones and seized joints.
But he has not only managed that, he has also bowled quite beautifully.
South Africa’s batsmen showed how badly the Aussies batted. It was a lovely batting pitch, and Botha bowls finger spin. His figures are, in one-day cricket especially, stunning — he went for 28 runs off his 10 overs on Monday bagged two wickets and did not concede a single boundary on what was a good batting wicket. He has taken seven in the series, to Nathan Bracken’s two — and Bracken is the world’s leading one-day bowler.
Talk about shutting a team down.
Botha is my man of the series by a stretch.
As for Australia, an opportunity to foster a little confidence has turned into an embarrassing nightmare. This will have knocked them back badly. The ease of the South African
victories, the nervelesslness of the chases, will really hurt.
What’s worse , of course, is that in exactly 30 days Australia’s new Test opening pair will be 22 yards away from one highly motivated Dale Steyn at the Wanderers.
You almost feel sorry for them.

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