It was just another Thursday afternoon in just another Joburg mall, but the boy of around 10 who emerged from a sporting goods shop holding a treasure in his hands and a gleam in his eyes will never forget the golden day.
Accompanied by, presumably, his father, both of them identifiably of south Asian heritage, he marched off holding in front of him at arm’s length a replica South Africa T20I shirt. There was no way he was going to allow it to suffer the indignity of being bundled into a plastic bag. Besides, how would the world know of his triumph if it could not be seen? So he held the shirt high enough for the number on the back to meet him at eye-level: 62.
In Centurion the night before, Gerald Coetzee – No. 62 himself – had gone wicketless for 51 in three overs. It was only the second time in his nine T20Is that he had not struck, and his economy rate of 17.00 is his worst. Given that performance, the boy couldn’t be sure Coetzee would be picked for Friday’s game at the Wanderers. And yet the not inconsiderable sum of USD 36 had been spent on the shirt.
Faith is a strange thing. A little goes a long way. Too much and you fall off the edge of reality into a Trumpian abyss. Just enough and you’re able to convince your parents to put up with taking you to a mall on a weekday afternoon to buy something that is, in terms of its tangibility, not worth nearly as much as its price.
But this is not about tangibility. It’s about emotion, loyalty and belonging. It’s about the magic that happens when you have settled on a hero, who upon their anointing as such are immediately and forever inviolate in your estimation.
So it would have mattered little to the boy that Coetzee seemed to pick up where he left off in Centurion by going for a dozen runs in his first over on Friday. And that despite bowling two dot balls. Sanju Samson launched one of the other deliveries over midwicket for six and speared backward point with another for four.
Whether Coetzee’s champion was in the ground to see the second over of the match was by no means certain. The Wanderers’ capacity is 28,000, and there were more than 10,000 in the ground before the start of the game. Not only had every available ticket been sold, every hospitality suite was occupied – a rarity. Tickets were being scanned at 160 people a minute, but thousands were in queues outside and the traffic was unusually hellish, even for Corlett Drive.
Strangely for a major venue, there are only three banks of turnstiles through which spectators can enter. That’s because much of the perimeter is taken up by a golf course – the northern end isn’t called the Golf Course End for nothing.
Maybe, if the kid wasn’t around to see his hero bowl, that was a good thing. Coetzee set off to start his second over, the last of the powerplay, but slowed to a jog a few paces before he came abreast of Stephen Harris, the umpire. His hand went to his left hamstring. He had a quick word with Aiden Markram, and left the field.
You don’t want to be sitting there, your heart pumping like only a 10-year-old’s can, in your brand new replica shirt, feeling the slightly stiff, crisp curves of the 62 on your back, when that happens.
“I tore both hamstrings more than once,” Coetzee told Cricbuzz last October during the World Cup. “I had side strains, abdominal tears, soft tissue injuries. It was very frustrating – out for six weeks, play two games, out for another six weeks… In 2020 I played only two professional games because of my hammies.”
Happily, Coetzee was back on the park for the start of the ninth over. He would have been heartened by what had happened in his absence. Sipamla replaced him to bowl the sixth, and got away with conceding six. Then Keshav Maharaj went for seven and Markram for eight.
Were South Africa stemming what was becoming a torrent of runs flying off the bats of Sanju Samson and Tilak Varma? Was Andile Simelane’s 24-run fifth over an aberration? Emphatically, no. Tristan Stubbs, Sipamla, Markram and Coetzee also suffered assaults of 20 or more runs in an over, and Maharaj and Sipamla each endured an over of 19.
With Samson and Varma in full fabulous fury, India reached three figures off 51 balls. It took them only 34 deliveries to reel in their second hundred. Samson made 107 at Kingsmead on Friday. Varma scored 107 not out in Centurion on Wednesday. Perhaps it’s a case of recency bias, but their batting on Friday put everything we have seen in this series in the shade.
Samson, who hammered 109 not out, went to his 50 off 28 and to his century 23 balls later. Varma, who crunched an undefeated 120, faced 22 deliveries for his half-century and another 19 to get to his ton. This is not a typo: Varma hit his last 70 runs off 25 balls. That’s 2.8 runs per delivery.
It was the third time two centuries had been scored in a T20I innings. But this instance was different. Sabawoon Davizi and Dylan Steyn did it for the Czech Republic against Bulgaria in Malta in May 2022. In Hong Kong in February 2024, Lachlan Yamomoto-Lake and Kendel Kadowaki-Fleming made hundreds for Japan against China.
The unbroken stand of 210 off 86 was the sixth-highest in T20Is, and it powered India to a total of 283/1 – the fifth-highest yet seen and India’s second biggest. Never before have South Africa conceded as many runs, home or away. India’s total bristled with 17 fours and 23 sixes. That’s 206 – or 72.79% – of all the runs they scored. And a new world record for sixes hit in an innings in T20Is between full member countries.
All seven of South Africa’s bowlers were battered into double-figure economy rates. Stubbs topped the list: his only over bled 21 runs. Coetzee might have wondered whether it wouldn’t have been wiser not to return to the scene of this violent crime against bowling. In the 15th, he induced Samson to sky the ball safely into no man’s land on the off side between converging fielders. With his next ball, he had Varma dropped by Maharaj running in from deep square leg and diving to try and take what would have been a fine catch. In the 18th, Marco Jansen at deep backward point made a hash of another, more straightforward chance Coetzee had earned to remove Varma.
Indeed, Varma had been living on borrowed time since the ninth over, when he pulled Maharaj hard and flat towards the midwicket fence. Simelane moved to his right, and realised too late he should have gone left. He palmed the ball over the boundary for six. Having played only one list A and one T20 here before Friday, and never when the east stand he would have to sight the ball against had anything like as many people on it. But taking that catch might have made all the difference – Varma had scored only four runs.
No doubt struggling under the strain of what they had been through, Reeza Hendricks, Ryan Rickelton, Markram and Heinrich Klaasen came and went in the space of 16 deliveries. Arshdeep Singh was in sniping form, taking 3/10 in his first two overs.
Stubbs and David Miller seemed to ease South Africa’s situation in their 54-ball partnership of 86. But reality was writ large in another stat: midway through the innings, when the stand was worth a normally handy 63, South Africa were scoring at 7.33 to the over when the required runrate was 21.10.
A dozen deliveries later, Miller holed out at long-on to Varun Chakaravarthy, who had decided to come around the wicket for that ball. Stubbs fell lbw to Ravi Bishnoi with the next ball. Thus reduced to 96/6 in the 13th, the South Africans succumbed for 148 in 18.2 to slump to defeat by 135 runs – their heaviest hiding in the format.
Somewhere in Johannesburg on Friday night, a 10-year-old took off a perhaps tear-stained replica shirt. It will be washed and folded and carefully packed away. It might not be worn again for a while, but worn again it will be. Heroes are, after all, inviolate. Even if their hamstrings aren’t.

By IPL Agent

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