On 17 February 2009, I purchased tickets to an international cricket game. Today, the game finally arrived. Mark and I attended the third One-Day International (ODI) cricket game between South Africa and Australia at Sahara Park at Newlands. We sat in the lawn area (translation: cheap seats) in the north-west corner of the ground, which meant that the sun was behind us for the entire match. The game started at 14h30 and ended after 21h00 (well after dark). The crowd is very close to the edge of the ground and was generally well-behaved.
The winner of day-night games at Newlands are almost entirely determined by which team wins the opening coin toss. That's because the dew that arrives after sunset makes batting very difficult. (Remember, bowlers bounce the ball to the batter in cricket.) Each team has one "innings" of 50 "overs". (An over is 6 bowls, or pitches.) So the one-day version of cricket is sometimes also called "limited-overs" cricket.
South Africa won the toss and elected to bat first (no surprise). The South Africans started slowly. Australian bowler Mitchell Johnson did well to keep the batters on their back feet, simply protecting the wicket. As their innings wore on, they started pushing to get more runs. They ran after almost every hit, taking more chances and becoming a bit bolder with every successive over. In the last 15 overs, the South African batters really turned on the power. By the end of their innings, they were hitting 4's (reaching the boundary on the ground) and a few 6's (the equivalent of a baseball home run) with amazing regularity. It was quite a display of batting firepower. They finished their innings with 289 runs, the highest ever first innings total in ODI cricket at Newlands. The atmosphere was electric in the last 5-10 overs. At one point the crowd was willing a 6 with rhythmic clapping, and the batter delivered by slamming one over the boundary. The crowd went absolutely berserk!
The Australians, in their innings, were chasing a rate of 5.8 runs/over. Very quickly, the required rate climbed to 7 and then 8: nearly impossible. Ricky Ponting, the short but effective Australian captain, seemed to get some momentum in his innings. But he was out after only 20 runs. At that point, the crowd could sense that Australia was effectively finished. Mark and I left at about 21h00. Having been there for about 7.5 hours, it was time to find a bed. South Africa held on for a 287-264 victory.
They allowed SLR cameras into the ground for the game, so I was able to take my good camera with a 300 mm lens. I was able to take lots of great photos. See many of them below.
--Matt
