Cricket: Swann spares England blushes

CENTURION - Graeme Swann played one of the great counter-attacking test innings at Centurion yesterday to haul his team back into this match.

England were struggling for survival on the high veldt until Swann cut loose with a dramatic 85 that kept his team tantalisingly within hailing distance of South Africa.

Swann's 81-ball blitzkrieg, which contained two sixes and 10 fours, was edge-of-your-seat stuff and it badly winded South Africa, who, on the back of five wickets from left-arm spinner Paul Harris, were expecting a more sizeable lead.

Swann's pyrotechnics have set up a potentially thrilling finish, especially if England can bowl South Africa out between tea and close of play overnight.

England were 197 runs behind when he came to the crease just before tea. Thereafter, there was not a shot in the book - and we are talking Indian Premier League science-fiction as well as MCC manuals - that he did not attempt, most with glorious outcomes.

Switch-hits, drives on the up, as well as over the top, all found the boundary except for his final sweep slog, which found Graeme Smith's hands at deep midwicket.

It wasn't quite a solo effort and his 106-run partnership with James Anderson, who struck his first six in test cricket, was an England record against South Africa. Yet the lift it gave both team and supporters was immediate, especially when Anderson followed it up by bowling Ashwell Prince for a duck just before the close.

There was controversy in the match too, amid the fine performances of each side's spinner, with the Decision Review System (DRS) coming under further scrutiny after Stuart Broad was given out lbw to JP Duminy, after the part-time offspinner had struck him on the pad half-forward.

Umpire Aleem Dar turned the initial appeal down but Duminy's insistence that it was out eventually won the attention of his skipper, Smith, who after a conference with his bowler (one TV broadcaster said it lasted 33 seconds but it seemed much longer), called for a referral.

The replay revealed that it ticked all the 'out' boxes and Broad was sent on his way, though not before he remonstrated with both umpires.

His complaint, and the one lodged by England's management later to the match referee, was that the delay allowed the dismissal to be analysed in the dressing room and the outcome relayed to the middle. Afterwards, Swann, who was batting with Broad at the time, said he was not aware of a message being sent.

The ICC's protocols on DRS say that decisions over whether to refer a decision by the fielding side should be made by the captain and take no more than a few seconds.

The other decision that DRS could have changed was Kevin Pietersen's, bowled off the inside edge by Morne Morkel for 40.

You would probably need an ego even bigger than Pietersen's to call for a review when your stumps are splattered but the first point of process for the URS is to see whether or not the bowler has bowled a legitimate ball and not overstepped the front crease.

Morkel had, though neither umpire Dar nor Collingwood, the non-striker, had spotted it and KP wandered off none the wiser until he was back in the dressing room.

That confection should not detract from the fact that it was a poor shot by Pietersen born of frustration.