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15/07/2008 13:07
Rob Houwing
London - Shaun Pollock cuts a dapper enough figure in the dark suit that has become the trademark attire for most on the Sky Sports commentary team. (It doesn't exactly bulge on him, either.)
Yet there is a good case for saying, I think, that he'd still look more at home - at the not wholly geriatric age of 35, from his birthday on July 16 - in his country's Test kit.
More especially, on the current tour of England.
Of course there will be some of you thinking: "What's this bloke on about? Polly retired after the Kingsmead Test against West Indies last summer... does this fool want to write Brian McMillan back into the team too? Why, Mike Procter or Clive Rice for good measure?"
Yes, I admit my case here is constructed on the useless fabric of sentimentality. (I have no information whatsoever that Pollock is contemplating chucking away his microphone and dramatically resurrecting his Test credentials: after a tentative start to his duties in that department at Lord's, one of my friends said, he's come into his own a bit.)
But I can't resist ruefully imagining, all the same, the impact and the balancing effect SM Pollock might have had on the Proteas' cause in the four-Test series.
Batting defiance
I make no apology for my disappointment several months ago when the flame-haired competitor shut the gate on his Test career - 421 wickets at 23.11, 3 781 runs at 32.31 and all that - in advance of illustrious looming assignments against both England and Australia that would have been particularly fitting send-off opportunities in front of cerebral and appreciative audiences.
Thanks to two deeply conscientious days of batting defiance at the back end of the Lord's match, South Africa moved to Leeds all square with three to play and possibly even in sounder frame of mind than their footsore foes, which had seemed a highly unlikely state of affairs considering the gory first half of the encounter for them.
But the first Test nevertheless exposed shortcomings in two key areas of the Proteas' armoury... departments that might not have proved problematic at all had it been for Pollock's availability to the cause.
The obvious one first: Polly's known suitability to (and deep awareness of) English conditions. For his stock instinct - unlike virtually all of Messrs Steyn, Ntini and Morkel - is to bowl the fullish length which, more often than not, has seamers in business in these climes.
It is true that the Ginger Ninja had long been missing the genuine gas of his relative youth - for several years before his retirement, in fact.
Ill-fated move
But as England's supersize Lord's innings of almost 600 showed, pace isn't everything.
Certainly on that soggy, low-clouded first morning of the Test after Graeme Smith had won the toss and inserted the hosts in an ultimately ill-fated move, I thought to myself as Pollock ambled up the spiral staircase to the Sky booths: "Ooh, if only. This is made for him to get 'em nibbling outside off..."
Raw, bang-it-in pace, we would quickly learn, isn't everything in this country. Polly might not have ripped spectacularly through the English order that day, it is true, but what a wonderful foil he'd have been for the frisky young quicks.
Ian Bell, he of the 199, has a known frailty to away-swing early in his knocks: might the England innings have sported an entirely different complexion had Pollock winkled him out instead of his getting so majestically, damagingly settled for 112 overs? I leave you to chew on that one.
But there is another reason for 'no-Polly' lament: the dangerous length of the South African tail. In what is shaping to be a very tight series, a pack-of-cards collapse by either of the teams in a single session of atmospherically dreamy conditions to bowlers could be what tilts the summer balance.
Awkward
And it is South Africa, with Morne Morkel presently a place too high at No 8, who may be marginally more vulnerable to that likelihood.
We all know that the lanky paceman has the potential to develop into a lower-order all-rounder of some usefulness. Based on his awkward, short-lived first-innings performance at Lord's, maybe not quite yet.
Pollock, I remind you - the predecessor at No 8 for South Africa - boasts 7 023 first-class runs to Morkel's present 473. And just for good measure, he averaged 43.87 in Tests in England.
Snap out of it now, Houwing...
Rob is Sport24?s chief writer.
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