S'Africa overwhelms Kenya in game two

At the toss, Kenyan skipper Maurice Odumbe said his team was there to learn. A fair assessment -- Kenya's presence in the Summer Spice series was to make up the numbers, pure and simple, and give them a chance to wet their feet among the big boys.

Not that this is such a bad thing -- if you don't play the big boys, you aren't ever going to up your own standards. Only, you get to hoping that said big boys would go beyond roping the likes of Bangladesh and Kenya into triangulars merely to increase the number of matches, but also let them compete in their local leagues, or organise A tours, and such to further the education process along.

Meanwhile, at Benoni -- a good 6000-plus feet above sea level -- the Kenyans found the atmosphere rarefied in more ways than one. In fact, ever since Shaun Pollock picked up a wicket off the first regular delivery of the day after starting off with a no-ball (Kennedy Otieno, playing away from his body at a straight ball outside off), it was pretty apparent that there was going to be no competitive interest in this one.

The Proteans in the field did what they know best, and do better than most: Their array of seamers bowled as one (there are times when you figure that by the time an innings is done, they've probably worn a groove on the just back of good length spot around off, considering how relentlessly their bowlers hit it) and their fielders -- with the Rhodes-Gibbs combination at point and cover -- shut down all thoughts of run-making. The innings is best described by the run progression: 27/1 in 15, 36/3 in 20, 86/3 in 30, 105/4 in 35, 130/5 in 40, 144/6 in 45.

The most noticeable problem for the Kenyans is footwork. Not ever having gone there, I couldn't say for sure -- but judging purely by the way they play, you'd have to reckon they don't have wickets of any kind of pace at all, back home. Batsman after batsman could be seen plonking his front foot down the track even before the ball was released -- and that kind of thing, against any halfway decent bowling attack, gets you in trouble.

There was only one batsman in the lot who has always looked the part of an international cricketer, and it's no surprise that Steve Tikolo was the only one who had the skills, off front foot and back, to play this attack on its real merits. Tikolo played shots all round the wicket in his unbeaten 68, and had you thinking, while he was doing it, that if he had a twin brother at the other end, South Africa could have had a real fight on its hands.

South Africa tried to introduce a bit of variety into its attack by roping in left arm spinner Claude Henderson in place of Justin Kemp -- perhaps a try out ahead of springing him on the Indians. But Henderson, with his flat style of delivery from a height and a lack of appreciable turn and variety, doesn't look the kind of missile you want to aim at Ganguly's lot.

The South African chase had about it the same air of inevitability as the bowling. If at all a criticism were to be made, it could be about the over-confidence shown by the two openers. Kirsten tried to hit every ball he faced, and ended up playing on (how many times in his career has he done that? I'd at a guess say that he and Jayasuriya must be front-runners in the played-on stakes) to a straight ball on off that he tried to whack over midwicket. And Gibbs had his front foot halfway down the track and a spot picked out somewhere in the crowd behind the backward square leg boundary before the ball had even been loosed -- thus all he managed to do was get it on pad onto back of bat into hands of fielder.

Jacques Kallis and Neil McKenzie then settled down to some batting practise against bowling that was mostly of the medium-paced, up and down variety as South Africa went about the mechanics of winning.

By way of aside, you are probably aware that this is the tournament where we get to see a couple of new ICC rules in action. Andrew Nel, against Sachin Tendulkar the other day in the second over of the Indian innings, became the first bowler to try out the new rule that says a bowler can bang one ball in short per batsman per over -- and from there on, the South Africans used the bouncer as both offensive and defensive (in the latter case, banging one short if they wanted to keep a particular batsman from taking a single and hogging strike) weapon.

The other relates to bonus points. As per the rule, you are entitled to one bonus point if you do either of two things: Happen you are batting first, you get the point if you then bowl out the opposition for 80 per cent or less of the runs you make (in this instance, Kenya had to take SA out inside 127). Or, if you bowl first, you then have to chase down the target inside 80 per cent of the overs consumed by the side batting first (which, in this case, meant SA had to get the required runs in 40 overs to qualify).

They did. With plenty to spare, and without working up any noticeable amounts of sweat. In fact, the bowling was so non-threatening that the Proteas lost their edge a bit and there was a bit of boredom, and the resulting looseness, about their shotplay.

Stand by, then, for game three, India versus South Africa again, Wednesday October 10.

Scorecard:
Kenyan innings
South African innings