While Australia and South Africa trade blows in the opening round of their heavyweight bout, it is interesting to look at the artillery that is on display in Perth. It isn’t that far removed the artillery on display three years ago, when the same two sides met at the same venue.
Ricky Ponting, Matthew Hayden, Michael Hussey, and Brett Lee were all on display in 2005. The South Africans then featured many that appear now. Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis, Mark Boucher, AB de Villiers and Makhaya Ntini were prominent players, whilst Ashwell Prince would’ve played his second Perth test this week had he not fractured his thumb.
There are the obvious men from that 2005 match missing in this one. Retirees Justin Langer, Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, and Shaun Pollock have all moved on the greener pastures.
Despite the extraordinary array of talent on display three years ago, the two stars of that test match were unheralded. Both played test innings of the highest quality, suggesting they could produce test careers of the ilk of the superstars mentioned above. But both have been cast into cricket’s wilderness, failed by the respective selection systems of their national panels.
The feats of Brad Hodge and Jacques Rudolph in Perth three years ago were phenomenal but remarkably they nullified each other to produce, what some experts contented, one of dullest test matches in recent memory.
The build up to the test match was eerily similar to this week. Australia had had its hegemony questioned after an unforeseen series loss in England. They plundered the entrée of the West Indies much as they had done New Zealand this month and were ready for a main course of South Africa, who were looking to carry on England’s work from the 2005 northern summer.
Like in this test match, the coin fell Ricky Ponting’s way in 2005 and he chose to bat. At the midway point of the match honours were fairly even. Ntini and Lee claimed five opposition scalps each and Australia began its second attempt trying to erase a deficit of 38.
Unconverted starts had plagued Australia’s first innings, and at the beginning of their second it was a case of déjà vu. But by stumps on day three Australia was well in control, 272 in front with six wickets in hand. Australia’s too most inexperienced test players, ironically with over 20,000 first-class runs between them, had combined for 126 unbroken. Hodge, playing just his fifth test innings was nine short of his first test century whilst Hussey was more than half way to his third ton in just his fourth test.
It was a nod to a selection policy that had begun with Darren Lehmann and Matthew Elliot in the mid 90s, continued with Simon Katich and Martin Love in the early 2000’s, before culminating in the insertion of these two for the start of the 2005/6 summer. It was a case of earning your stripes. All these men were forced to plunder domestic attacks for a decade before making the next step. Even the incumbents like Hayden, Langer, and the Ashes discard Damien Martyn had been forced to do the same after debuting early before being relegated just as quickly.
Hodge nervously found the nine he needed on the fourth morning but he did not stop there. He continued to compile leaving Ricky Ponting with an awkward decision around tea whether to let the Victorian pursue a much craved test double century, or call him in cruelly for the benefit of the team’s pursuit.
Ponting allowed Hodge to go on to make 203no. It was a decision that was widely admonished. Ponting had been pilloried for his performance in England, from a perceived brain fade at the toss in Edgbaston; to criticism for “captaincy by consensus” his job had come into question. Australia did not win the test match in Perth. They could not remove South Africa in 126 fourth innings overs whilst the Proteas’ got nowhere near the Everest-like target of 491.
Critics called for the captain’s head. Dennis Lillee called for Ponting’s sacking for putting the individual above the team, a criticism that has been levelled at him since. McGrath’s defence of his skipper by saying the team unanimously wanted Hodge to go on, further fuelled those who criticised Ponting’s “consensus” style.
The reality was it was a ridiculously flat pitch. McGrath was correct in his assessment that nine times out of 10 the Australian’s would back themselves to take 10 wickets in 126 overs. But even with two of the greatest test wicket takers in history in their line-up, Australia could only create five chances. How could they manage ten in the 140 overs they might have bowled had Ponting declared earlier?
The man who thwarted Australia’s progress was somewhat forgotten in the analysis, something that has happened far too often to Jacques Rudolph.
South Africa looked far from safety. They had lost their captain Smith and first innings top scorer de Villiers whilst still needing 405 for the unlikeliest of victories. Rudolph turned his 18no overnight into an unbeaten 102 by stumps on day five. He absorbed the pace of McGrath, Lee, and Nathan Bracken whilst playing Warne with aplomb. Rudolph’s vigil was 413 minutes in length, in which time he faced 283 balls, and he struck 13 boundaries.
It was redemption of sorts for Rudolph. Unlike Hodge he was promoted on potential at the tender age of 20 but was twice cruelly denied a test debut. The first, against India in 2001-2, he scored a century on debut in what was thought to be the third test of the series, only for the game to classified as a first-class fixture because of India’s flagrant political pout, when they played Virender Sehwag in spite of his one-test suspension.
His second false start was even crueler and even more significant politically. Selected to play in the final test of 2001-2 tour of Australia, Rudolph’s cap was revoked by the United Cricket Board’s president Percie Sonn on racial discrimination grounds. It was one of South Africa’s darkest hours since readmission post-apartheid. Rudolph, a white man, was left out for a player of colour, Justin Ontong, in order to fulfill a quota. A nation fighting for social justice, after coloured men had been discriminated against for so long, had now turned 180 degrees.
Rudolph finally debuted in 2003 with 222no against Bangladesh in Chittagong. It was the highest score by a South African on debut, and the second highest score on debut in test history.
Perth would be Rudolph’s best of his five test hundreds but he turned his back on his country in 2007. He had been in and out of the test side following a poor home series against Australia in 2006, but despite an impending recall he signed a three-year Kolpak agreement with English County Yorkshire which ruled him ineligible to play for the Proteas. The 25 year old sighted the need for stability following years of selection nightmares, and hence a man with unquestionable talent was lost to test cricket for at least three years.
Although the circumstances were different, Brad Hodge also finds himself in the international wilderness. Just four innings after his Perth double century he was discarded by the Australian selectors, for a perceived weakness against the rising ball. Somehow his immense first-class record, which had got him his baggy green, suddenly counted for nothing. When Hodge’s replacement Damien Martyn mysteriously retired only two test matches into the 2006-7 Ashes, it was Andrew Symonds and Adam Voges, two men whose combined first-class record (as well as their handling of short-pitched bowling) does not match the Victorian’s, were called in as replacements. Voges never played, but Symonds eventually repaid the selectors with a test century. He took 18 innings to do it. Hodge’s hundred in Perth came in just his fifth.
The Victorian was recalled to replace Michael Clarke for one test in the West Indies in May 2008, where he made 67 and 27, but was not taken to India despite Symonds’ absence.
Hodge’s first-class record features 16,250 runs at 47.79 with 49 centuries. He is Victoria’s all-time leader run-scorer but has proved as unpopular with test selectors as the previous record holder Dean Jones. If Hodge was a New Zealander he might well be their all-time leading test run-scorer. Instead his test career has stalled on 503 runs, averaging 55.88.
It is amazing that two players could dominate a test match in such a manner three years ago and fall so far from test ranks in the in-suing period.
Neither may play test cricket again, and both can only look back at Perth and wonder what exactly they did wrong.
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