Online Reporter
AN old guard still hungry for more and a young terrier starting a journey towards stardom — Sean William and Corbin Bosch found a way to write the stories of the first Test between Zimbabwe and South Africa.
It’s something South Africa captain Keshav Maharaj noticed.
“Corbin has just come into our environment and he’s settled in very well,” Maharaj told a press conference.
Not many can bowl 140 (kilometres an hour) and bat the way he does.
“I’m so happy for him. He works really hard on his game, and he trusts his skill and backs himself. It’s nice to see everything come together for him.
“We had a long chat after the first innings and to see him do something special like that is encouraging.”
Maharaj also had kind words for Williams, whose 137 in a losing cause was his fifth century in 19 innings. Of Zimbabwe’s last 10 hundreds, half have been scored by Williams.
“He’s a very hungry cricketer,” Maharaj said of the 38-year-old left-hander. “He’s unorthodox in his approach but effective.
“He’s been a stalwart of Zimbabwean cricket for a long time, hence he’s reaping the rewards. It’s nice to see the older generation still putting their hands up.”
Rewind to last month and that party at Lord’s.
Amid the bedlam of the party which followed South Africa’s crowning as the World Test Champions at Lord’s, an all-rounder, who had not cracked the nod for the XI, stood out.
He stood and chatted informally and happily with reporters, as did his mother.
He seemed content to have made it onto the field only when a substitute fielder was required.
Bosch was chuffed to have been even a peripheral part of South Africa’s triumph.
What wasn’t on television was the role he had played in the nets, in team meetings and in ensuring that the XI had everything they needed to give of their best.
His mother, Karen-Anne Bosch, looked just as satisfied as her son.
Seventeen days on, Bosch was no longer languishing in the wings.
Instead he was centre-stage.
Queens Sports Club isn’t Lord’s and a non-WTC Test against Zimbabwe isn’t as significant an occasion as a global final.
But you can only take the chances you’re given, and Bosch took his with both hands.
He scored an important 100 not out in the first innings— coming to the crease after South Africa had slumped to 55/4 and 181/6 – and struck in the top, middle and late orders to take 5/43 in Zimbabwe’s second dig and help the visitors win by 328 runs midway through the second session on the fourth day on Tuesday.
Both milestones were Bosch’s first at this level, and in only his second Test.
Somehow that wasn’t enough to earn Bosch the player-of-the-match prize.
While Lhuan-dre Pretorius’ 153 on debut was vital to the cause, he would have been unlikely to make that many were it not for the stand of 108 he shared with Bosch.
Wiaan Mulder, too, might have been a more credible POM winner — he took 4/50 in the home side’s first innings and scored 147 as South Africa built their lead to 536.
But these things are often adjudicated, as they were in this case, by the commentators, who tend to be simple creatures who refuse to look past the top scorer. So Pretorius it was, and bully for him.
Not that it matters.
POM awards are an artifice dreamed up by marketing types who labour under the misconception that cricket needs to be made more interesting than it already is by design.
Who needs the farce of a plastic trophy and a cartoonly over-sized cheque?
Television does, and the commentators in its pay are only too ready to indulge this cheap, irrelevant fakery.
The joke is on them, because we are well capable of deciding for ourselves which player delivers the most consequential performance in a particular match.
That Bosch was that man in Bulawayo was as obvious as the familiar flavour of Nando’s at the High Commissioner’s residence in London.Bosch is no stranger to the limelight.
Between December and the Bulawayo Test he made his debut— against Pakistan in Centurion, where he took a wicket with his first ball and scored 81 not out —and played three games for Mumbai Indians as a replacement for the injured Lizaad Williams.
And now this chapter in his personal fairytale.
“I was speaking to my mom about it the other day,” Bosch told reporters on Wednesday.
“I still need to pinch myself that everything is real. I’ve had a magical period.” —Cricbuzz/Sports Reporter
