WTC PREVIEW: Clash of the two giants

If the final of the World Test Championship was to be decided by experience or the weight of runs and wickets obtained by the respective 15-man squads, the Australians need not even take the trophy mace out of the velvet stocking in which it is lovingly wrapped for travel. It’s theirs for another two years.

Fortunately, although cricket matches can change direction with the intervention of players who have ‘seen it and done it’ all before, there is no guarantee that the more experienced team will win.

The contrast is most stark (excuse the pun) among the bowlers. Australia’s four-man, frontline attack has a combined 371 test caps and an eye-watering 1 508 wickets. South Africa’s, assuming Lungi Ngidi partners Kagiso Rabada, Marco Jansen, and Keshav Maharaj in the frontline, has 653 – of which Rabada has just over half.

                                Caps             Wickets

Mitchell Starc           96                 382

Pat Cummins           67                 294

Josh Hazlewood      72                 279

Nathan Lyon            136               553

Kagiso Rabada      70                 327

Marco Jansen        17                 73

Lungi Ngidi            19                 55

Keshav Maharaj     57                198

Rabada has the edge (so to speak) at Lord’s, however, having claimed 13 wickets at an average of 19.38 at the game’s headquarters while Hazlewood leads the way for Australia with 13 at 26.15. Cummins has 10 at 21.1 and Starc eight wickets at a cost of 33.62.

Rabada’s 47 wickets in 10 tests during the WTC cycle came at an average of just under 20 and his presence in the final will be critical to South Africa’s chances of victory.

Nay-sayers and doubters will also point to the records – caps and runs – of the batsmen and conclude that the Proteas are similarly handicapped with Steve Smith way ahead of anyone else in either squad, an all-time great with over 10 000 test runs. Temba Bavuma is South Africa’s most successful batsman with 3 606.

Travis Head played in all 19 of Australia’s tests en-route to the final scoring 1 177 runs – he was also man-of-the-match during in the last final with his blistering 163 which took the game away from India at The Oval in London and then added another century against the same opponents in the ODI World Cup final just five months later.

Bavuma missed five of the first six tests of the WTC cycle through injury but stormed back when it mattered most, compiling 609 runs at an average of 60.9 in 11 innings to lead from the front in every respect as the Proteas qualified for the final with seven consecutive victories.

Ryan Rickelton scored 451 runs from his six tests in the WTC with 259 of them coming in his last innings against Pakistan at Newlands, an innings that established his place in the starting XI having slotted into every position from three to six during a stop-start beginning to his career.

David Bedingham was South Africa’s leading run-scorer during the two years of the WTC cycle with 645 but, like Tristan Stubbs, Rickelton and Kyle Verreynne, his test average is modest – all from small sample sizes. But Bedingham, Rickelton and Verreynne all average over 50 over a decade of first-class cricket, which is a guarantee of class.

“We may not have the experience or the statistics of the Australians but that does not mean we don’t have the class,” says head coach, Shukri Conrad.

Route to the Final:

AUSTRALIA: Played 19, Won 13, Drawn 2, Lost 4

2-2 v England (a)

3. v Pakistan (h)

1-0 v West Indies (h)

2-0 v New Zealand (a)

3-1 v India (h)

2. v Sri Lanka (a)

SOUTH AFRICA: Played 12, Won 8, Drawn 1, Lost 3

1-1 v India (h)

0-2 v New Zealand (a)

1-0 v West Indies (a)

2-0 v Bangladesh (a)

2-0 v Sri Lanka (h)

2-0 v Pakistan (h)