Comment: Rob Houwing

Cape Town – Glory, glory, hallelujah! There just seems to be no limit to the depth of hunger and ambition of the South African national cricket side.

On Monday at the Adelaide Oval, the Proteas not only beat Australia in the fourth one-day international, they had the audacity to pulverise them on a day intended as a holiday celebration of the home nation’s heritage.

The merciless, eight-wicket triumph with 71 balls to spare opened up an unassailable 3-1 lead in the five-match series and now the Perth dead-rubber contest on Friday can serve as a free-spirited carnival to mark their cumulative achievements Down Under this summer.

That is, should they wish it to be so – the sparkling and utterly professional way they have gone about their “instant” business despite the emotional demands of the prior Test phase for the many dual-role players in the camp, only seems to suggest that they will barely gear down from power-fifth at the WACA.

Yes, don’t bet against them making it a surreal 4-1, even if they opt to rest some tired bowling legs, in particular, in Perth and give valuable further international exposure to patient peripheral squad members like Lonwabo Tsotsobe and Wayne Parnell.

First ever Test series win in Australia, and now nose-rubbing superiority, slightly against expectation, in the one-dayers … this goes down as indisputably South Africa’s finest ever cricket tour anywhere, and we must doff our caps proudly and unreservedly to them for that very fact. It is one mean achievement.

What do you say about the acting captain Johan Botha? Many Aussie critics, typically recapturing their gung-ho voices not long after the dust settled on the Test portion, quickly latched onto the Warriors man’s status as leader as a source of mystery and potential weakness.

Even as they watched him rediscover his own Australian feet, if you like, in the lightweight arena of the two Twenty20 games, it was clear they had not done their homework, either on his resurgent credentials as a bowler or his suitability to wear the proverbial “armband”.

Perhaps the neutral Peter Roebuck summed up Botha most aptly, in his column in the Sydney Morning Herald: “Clearly a fighter to the core … Hansie Cronje without the betrayal. (He is) not the most talented cricketer to visit this land, but among the most resolute.”

Again Botha the off-spinner was highly, highly influential in the middle phase of the Australian innings, where it has becoming a very disturbing pattern for them to lose the plot rather abjectly after fiery enough starts.

The result was that 222 all out, a criminal two overs shy of their full 50, was never going to be enough on a sun-baked belter.

And there was something gloriously similar, ironically, to the Gilchrist-era Aussie approach of four or five years ago in the manner in which the Proteas immediately set about the undemanding chase.

Crash, bang, wallop … it was basically goodnight Sheila as Herschelle Gibbs (and even Jacques Kallis fleetingly!) thrillingly cranked up the “bling” against the ineffectual likes of Messrs Tait – always, it seems, a hamstring twinge waiting to happen – Hilfenhaus and Johnson.
What has happened to Mitchell Johnson? The left-armer, so cutting-edged in the Test series, seems to still be feeling the effects of his massive levels of industry there, and will have to be very carefully managed in the New Zealand ODIs preceding the Aussie departure for our shores.

He has travelled for an ugly 9-0-71-1 at Sydney and now 10-0-63-0 at Adelaide, his pace noticeably down and his direction often AWOL as well.

The chief cashers-in on Aussie bowling disarray on Monday, especially after Gibbs had drawn upfront blood, were AB de Villiers and Hashim Amla, whose unbeaten third-wicket stand produced 144 tick-tick-tick runs in 26 overs.

De Villiers played with searing purpose and consummate timing as he chose his deliveries beautifully to smack 82 not out at a strike rate of 96.47, while Amla (unbeaten 80) showed his renowned Test-match pacing qualities and unflappability even if his own timing was just a tad out on the day – his perseverance was admirable all the same.

Ian Healy was generous enough to describe the overall South African performance as “flawless”. He was not far wrong.

Good on yer, Proteas …