India thrash South Africa in Champions Trophy
Yesterday I went to the Oval in the one and only ICC Trophy natch I will be watching as spectator. I am very much in the tv camp when it comes to big cricket matches and this match experience did not alter my view.
Firstly, there is travel. It should be a simple journey from the coast to Clapham Junction and a one stop change to Vauxhall on the South West network. Unlike the tube these trains come along roughly every 20 minutes . The train pitiably crawled its way and was stuck outside Vauxhall because of engineering works. Outside the station a steward was bawling and treating us like naughty cattle bossing us to cross at the lights.
Then there is the Oval a ground I have never liked. My Surrey friends have me marked down as a patrican Lords man which is true as I much prefer the glades of St Johns Wood to the inner City compactness of Kennington. The seating is cramped and our stand ,The Vauxhall End, had no protection from the burning sun.
Finally there is the crowd. The Indian supporters come out in droves to support them in their light blue shirts. They are certainly not violent just extremely noisy and excitable .
As for the game , South Africa put up a pitiable performance. They are a strong ODI side with the likes of AB de Villiers, Morkel, Robada, de Kock and Amla. However the last two were far too slow as openers in building the platform and the pressure on the middle order might be a reason for some appalling running between the wickets.
The situation of the running out of David Miller when he and Faf du Plessis occupied the same end I last saw at my prep school with 2 bewildered boys arguing in the same crease who were at fault and which one was out.
In this case the excellent Simon Hughes on the radio clarified that the batsmen had crossed before they both set off to the same end.
South Africa lived up to their reputation as chokers as they lost 8 wickets for 53 runs and their total of 191 was indefensible in every sense.
In the interval I set off to the loo. On the concourse outside the gents the Indian supporters were celebrating raucously and the whole area log jammed with more supporters descending both sides of the narrow staircase from the arena and immediately joining the carousing throng. It was a horrible experience as I had to fight my way up the gangway.
Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the day was to witness the thrilling batting of Dharman, top run scorer in the tournament and Kohli , one world class batsmans whose form has not been tempered by captaincy unlike AB de Villiers.
I attended the match with a barrister friend of mine how is deeply knowledgeable on the game but to my surprise could not answer the trivia question I set him namely who were the the 4 overseas players to score 100 hundreds. The answer is Zaheer Abbas, Don Bradman, Viv Richards and Glenn Turner.
I timed the journey back. It was precisely one hour after I left the stadium early because of the slow timetable before I boarded the train at Clapham Junction back to the coast.
To cap a day when more went wrong than right I then bought a carton of milk at Clapham station and was assured it would not spill. When I returned to base the unread newspapers in my food bag were swimming in it.
