Red-ball fever should be raging across South Africa with the men’s national team one win away from the World Test Championship (WTC) final and the women on the eve of their first Test at home in 22 years, and first of six in the next FTP cycle.
But is it really raging? If you turn on your television, you may not think so. You may ask whether South Africans really care about watching Test cricket (which is, of course, different, to knowing about it or celebrating it). The numbers say no. South Africa’s series win over Sri Lanka was watched by a total of around 14,000 people over nine days at Kingsmead and Durban. On any single day of the match, there were never more than 2,000 people at the ground.
So how many will turn up in Bloemfontein, a place cricket has largely forgotten, with no SA20 franchise and a domestic team who was recently relegated but since promoted to the top division, to watch a women’s Test? The next four days will reveal the answer, but don’t be overly expectant. A heatwave is sweeping across the country and temperatures tipped over 40 degrees Celsius in the Free State in the last week. With large swatches of the ground unprotected from the sun, fans may prefer the cool of their homes.
Their absence may tempt you to explain the South African men’s lean Test schedule (they will only play 12 games in this cycle) as a response to this perceived apathy but it is more the case of the economics outside the stands. Broadcast rights, for one, favour fewer Tests, more white-ball games, and a franchise T20 tournament. And with all that in place, the South African men are still in the running for the WTC final and the women’s Test schedule in the next four years will see them play the same number of matches as they did in the 20 years between 2002 and 2022. So something is changing, and it may be that red-ball matches are rare enough to be really valued.
“Mandla did a bit of a presentation for us yesterday on red-ball cricket and a lot of the stuff he was saying made me definitely want to play more of a format,” Laura Wolvaardt said at the pre-match press conference. “I absolutely love Test cricket. It’s the purest form of the game and to be able to play it is always such an awesome opportunity.”
Her counterpart, Heather Knight, who has played four times the number of Tests as Wolvaardt, used exactly the same words – “absolutely love” – to describe how she felt about Test cricket. “The mental challenge of it, the repetition of skill, the adapting to so many different situations that you might face, I think it’s a really good learner for younger players,” Knight said.
But both of them acknowledged that it is “tough,” to play a format at international level that they have no foundations in at domestic level. South Africa, England and every other country apart from India and, as of this month, Bangladesh, do not play any red-ball, or time-based version of cricket at any level other than occasional Tests. Wolvaardt described this as a “bit weird,” that her only red-ball matches have been Tests while Knight called herself a “novice at Test cricket.”
In that context, it seemed unfair to ask bigger-picture questions over things like form or player development. Yes, South Africa have played two Test matches and lost them heavily this year, but they were in vastly different conditions – Perth and Chennai – and perhaps all they demonstrate is how difficult it is to adapt to playing in different places at Test level. Yes, England have a multi-format Ashes to think about and Knight admitted they have “one eye” on that while also trying to have success here. Without the consistency of playing Tests regularly, it’s more sensible to assess and analyse them in isolation.
In this case, what stands out is how differently the teams have approached preparation and what that may suggest about the kind of contest we can look forward to. Knight said England have “tried to incorporate the odd red-ball session to practice the skills.”
South Africa, meanwhile, didn’t “really want to be training in the middle of a T20 series for the Test match, so we sort of just left it for right before the Test,” Wolvaardt said. What they agreed on was that the two-day turnaround after the last ODI to the start of this Test is too little time to work on any technical skills. Instead, they’re working with what they already have, but in opposite ways.
Wolvaardt is trying to rein in any attacking instincts to allow herself to bat for longer. “Batting is more of a reaction type of thing. My cover drive is my favourite shot, and now it’s the one shot that I’m not allowed to play early on with all those slips behind me.”
Knight thinks it’s better to play the way you normally would. “A key message is not changing your game too much because it’s a red ball. That certainly was a mistake I made early in my career, when I went into Test match cricket and I was like, ‘right, I’ve got to block it, I’ve got to leave the ball’, and I don’t want us to have that mentality because I don’t think it’s a good mentality to have.”
Could this indicate we will see a more aggressive England against a conservative South Africa? If that is how it transpires it will be keeping with what we have to come to know about the teams’ DNA over time. It was no surprise that a reference to (not Bazball) Ben Stokes was made when discussing how England will look to put the opposition under pressure, which drew a response that began with “we’re our own team,” and went into soaking up pressure and then counter-punching. Likewise, Wolvaardt was asked about the men’s performances in the WTC and called the second Test against Sri Lanka “very cool,” to watch.
These narratives will continue to be woven into women’s Tests until the matches become more than one-offs, though Knight cautioned against longer series until there is a domestic foundation in red-ball cricket. “It’s really hard to do that without any domestic cricket,” she said. “Preparing bowlers in particular physically without breaking them is really tough because naturally the amount of cricket that we play is all white ball. It’s really tough to play too many more and get the preparation right in terms of those bowlers. Selfishly, I do really love playing Test cricket but I think it’s about how you incorporate it alongside franchise cricket, alongside all the cricket that we play.”
And so the cycle of too much in a world that can’t get enough continues, but South Africa are an interesting case study. You could argue the men have had too little Test cricket and merely played the best hand they could with the cards they were dealt and that is proving inspirational for their women’s team too. “It’s obviously really nice to see them doing well and to see them almost in the final of their Test Championship,” Wolvaardt said. “I hope that it just sparks interest around the country to watch more Test cricket. Hopefully if there’s a bit more of a buzz around Test cricket in the country people will be keen to watch us as well.”
Maybe red-ball fever is not quite raging, but rumbling along until it gets the opportunity to really roar.
Firdose Moonda is ESPNcricinfo’s correspondent for South Africa and women’s cricket
