England v South Africa, 2012

Test matches (3): England 0, South Africa 2
One-day internationals (5): England 2, South Africa 2
Twenty20 internationals (3): England 1, South Africa 1

	Hashim Amla began with a triple-century at The Oval, and seemed never to leave the crease for the rest of the tour © Getty Images Enlarge
Related Links Series/Tournaments: South Africa tour of England Teams: England | South Africa

South Africa flew home with England grateful they would not be returning for a bilateral series until 2017. This was their third successive visit - each under the leadership of Graeme Smith - to coincide with the resignation of the England captain: for Nasser Hussain in 2003 and Michael Vaughan in 2008, read Andrew Strauss in 2012. It was a summer in which South Africa won the Tests 2-0 to retain the Basil D'Oliveira Trophy and replace England at the top of the ICC rankings; and it left the hosts questioning not only their own carefully established sense of worth, but the team spirit which had helped get them to the top of the world in the first place.

Quite simply, England fell apart: both on the field, where they never truly recovered after Hashim Amla's epic undefeated 311 condemned them to a humiliating loss in the First Test at The Oval; and off it, as a split between Kevin Pietersen and other members of the team sprang into public view.

Despite batting brilliantly for 149 in the drawn Second Test at Headingley, Pietersen was dropped for the final game, at Lord's, in part because it emerged he had sent "provocative" BlackBerry messages to South African players (although the ECB later accepted his assurance that the messages had not been derogatory about others within the England camp).

Both teams knew they could not afford to put a foot wrong, but England - defending a record of seven successive Test series wins at home - now found themselves horribly distracted. It was during South Africa's second warm-up game, at Canterbury, that reports surfaced suggesting Pietersen, who had already announced his retirement from the international limited-overs formats, wanted to miss Tests at home to New Zealand in 2013 to spend more time at the IPL. It was hardly likely to endear him to management or team-mates. Then, ahead of the Second Test, Ravi Bopara withdrew, citing domestic problems. He returned for the one-day internationals and Twenty20s, but his meaningful contributions came only with the ball.

As a result, England were obliged to blood James Taylor at Headingley, and recall Jonny Bairstow at Lord's not long after he had been dropped amid concerns about his technique against the short ball. Bairstow played two spirited innings but, despite a late fightback engineered by Matt Prior, England's leading run-scorer in the series, as they chased an improbable 346, he could not prevent defeat. Strauss denied Pietersen was a factor in his resignation, which came after 100 Test appearances, 50 of them in charge. "My race was run," he said. But not everyone was convinced by his claim; at the very least, the Pietersen affair had overshadowed his farewell - a further source of irritation to other team members.

By contrast, South Africa, who watched the debacle unfold with detached amusement, remained impressively focused, in spite of several potentially destabilising events. Within a week of arriving, Mark Boucher - the veteran wicketkeeper hoping to play his 150th Test at Lord's - sustained a freak injury at Taunton, where a flying bail struck his left eye. It ended not only his tour, but an unflinching career. His distraught team-mates had to regroup quickly.

A. B. de Villiers was pressed into service as batsman-keeper, with J-P. Duminy slotting in at No. 7, a move that actually strengthened the line-up, even though England managed to keep de Villiers relatively quiet. Boucher's misfortune, in fact, appeared only to stiffen the South Africans' resolve. When the series was won, several of them took to the Lord's outfield sporting T-shirts bearing tributes to their absent friend.

The touring party also had to defend themselves against allegations of leaking the Pietersen texts, a charge they denied. Weeks later, following several apologies to his colleagues, Pietersen was preparing for what ECB chairman Giles Clarke called his "reintegration" to the fold, when chief executive David Collier went even further. "The texts were responses to messages from members of the South African team," he told BBC radio. "I certainly think that did provoke the situation. There was definitely a policy. There was a tactic that was used." South Africa, who had maintained all along that the texts were mere banter - a claim undermined by Pietersen himself, with his admission that they were "provocative" - issued strenuous denials, amid talk of legal action; Collier apologised. Whatever the truth, the South Africans never let the matter affect their cricket. For a team with a reputation for faltering in sight of the big prize, their poise was admirable, and much credit was due to Smith and Gary Kirsten, the coach.

While Strauss appeared exhausted by three and a half years of captaincy, Smith's energy in his tenth year at the helm of the Test side - he, like Strauss, had already ceded the one-day job - seemed undiminished; he even squeezed in a lightning visit home after the Oval Test to attend the birth of his first child. He had, in fact, been talked into staying in charge in 2011 by Kirsten, who may have had personal reasons for wanting to win in England: on each of his three tours as a player, South Africa had blown a 1-0 lead.

Not many rival coaches had got the better of Andy Flower, but Kirsten did. He managed expectation and crises with a sure hand, and it was his idea to take the bulk of the squad to the Swiss Alps for a pre-tour team-building exercise run by polar explorer and mountain climber Mike Horn. They walked and cycled, climbed peaks and plunged into freezing lakes, and arrived in England armed with aphorisms, which were duly aired at every opportunity. Horn must have purred when, with the Tests in the bag, Duminy tweeted: "Getting to the top of the mountain is just the start of the work." Horn, like Boucher, was with the team in spirit every step of the way.

	Andrew Strauss, who retired after his 100th Test appearance, said his "race was run" © Getty Images Enlarge

South Africa might have achieved their main goal, but England rallied to earn a share of the one-day and Twenty20 series, preserving their top ranking in one format and regaining it in the other. But these contests felt like an irrelevance, especially after a dramatic final day of the Test series: they were diminished by rain and the absence of some high-profile personnel, and the 20-over games were used by both sides to experiment ahead of the World Twenty20 (a fat lot of good it did either team). In truth, it was a poorly structured tour, partly because of a clash with the London Olympics.Whatever happened to assurances from both boards that England-South Africa would always be a marquee series consisting of at least four matches?

South Africa won most of the tricks that mattered, and England's top three batsmen each had a personal nemesis. Morne Morkel, thrown the new ball on the first morning of the series to general surprise, picked up where he had left off in South Africa on England's tour in 2009-10, tormenting Strauss from round the wicket and removing him with his fourth delivery. Morkel dismissed the England captain only once more, but he was a constant thorn in his side, and Strauss's last act - padding up to Vernon Philander late on the fourth evening at Lord's - was that of a man who had simply become overwhelmed. Only once before, against Sri Lanka in 2011, had he averaged fewer in a series of at least three Tests than the 17 he managed here.

Philander - whose ability to swing the ball received belated reward at Lord's, where he also played two valuable innings - removed Alastair Cook cheaply in each of the three matches after he had begun the series with a century. And Dale Steyn accounted for Jonathan Trott in four of his five completed innings. England's average score at the fall of the second wicket was 67, to South Africa's 124. But even that barely did justice to the gulf in quality between the two batting units.

Smith, who had been sidelined before the tour by an ankle problem, as usual scored heavily, taking his aggregate in 12 Tests in England to 1,355. If his century at The Oval in his 100th Test brought the satisfaction of setting up a crushing win, his fifties at Headingley in two opening stands of 120 were equally valuable. His unorthodox method sent England's bowlers into a predictable tizzy. At Headingley, they came up with all manner of theories, when a simple off-stump line, with a view to an outside edge, was later confirmed as the best policy during the one-day internationals (Steven Finn thought he had removed Smith that way during the Second Test, only for umpire Steve Davis to call dead ball because he had dislodged the bails with his knee).

England presumably spent less time in advance worrying about where to bowl at Alviro Petersen, but he shook off a foot injury to keep them at bay for a nine-hour 182 after they had chosen to field first in the Second Test. Nothing compared, though, to the majesty and might of Amla who, in going unbeaten for more than 13 hours at The Oval to make South Africa's first Test triple-century, broke not only records but English spirits. His tactic of moving across his stumps to Graeme Swann was instrumental in the offspinner going wicketless for 52 overs; Swann was immediately dropped by Flower for the first time since being left out of two Tests in the West Indies in 2008-09.

In Swann's absence at Headingley, part-time offspinner Pietersen took a wicket with his second ball, and finished with four in the game, which only highlighted the extent to which England had been thrown off course. For his part, Amla was unfazed by ascending such heights: he crafted runs serenely for the rest of the tour, finishing with 900 in all internationals (including 100 fours and two sixes), and top-scoring in eight innings out of 11.

The series had been billed as a showdown between two experienced and proven pace attacks, and particularly James Anderson and Steyn. It turned out to be a non-event. Anderson's removal of Petersen for a duck in his opening spell sold everyone - not least himself - a huge dummy, and he soon gave way to frustration as the ball stubbornly refused to be as pliant in his hands as in the opposition's. His nine wickets in the series cost 40 apiece. Stuart Broad was well down on his usual pace - the England camp blithely dismissed these concerns - and was little more than a passenger, except for one vibrant spell on the final afternoon in Leeds. Why, wondered observers, didn't he always bowl like that? Finn, brought in to stir the attack out of somnambulance, looked their most potent weapon, and bowled exceptionally well on the fourth afternoon at Lord's to keep England in the game.

Steyn it was who first stirred South Africa into action. They had laboured largely in vain on the opening day of the series, but he bounded in on the second morning - the skies now handily obscured by grey cloud - to trigger a collapse; South Africa proceeded to win the next ten sessions too. Steyn was a constant threat, although Morkel, thanks to his height and unorthodox angles, posed the most consistently awkward questions. Jacques Kallis's role as a frontline bowler had appeared to be numbered, but he balanced the attack in impressive fashion. His muscular efforts late on the first day and early on the second at The Oval brought the prized wickets of Pietersen and Ian Bell, and gave Steyn the support he needed in slowing England's advance. And his hard work meant South Africa did not miss Marchant de Lange, who pulled out of the tour in the first week because of a back injury.

As usual, Kallis caught pretty much everything in the field, too, in stark contrast to England's slapdash handling, another area in which their standards had slipped. South Africa benefited from at least eight spilled catches, the most expensive of which reprieved Amla 40 runs into his 311 (admittedly not even a half-chance to Strauss at slip); Petersen 29 runs into his 182; and Amla, again, by the normally immaculate Prior, when he had scored two of his 121 at Lord's. Anderson, England's safest catcher, also put down de Villiers at Lord's, causing a crucial delay in the push for wickets that might have kept the run-chase to more manageable proportions. Overall, South Africa held 33 catches to England's 22, and executed three run-outs to one. As so often, the tension told on the side playing catch-up.

All in all, few better prepared, organised or balanced sides have toured England in modern times. South Africa even coaxed a handy performance out of Imran Tahir, a legbreak and googly bowler born and raised in Pakistan but now qualified by residence. Having sought guidance from Abdul Qadir before the tour, Tahir played a small but vital part - bamboozling Strauss at The Oval and outbowling Swann. This wasn't saying much, but it was enough.

Match reports for

Tour Match: Somerset v South Africans at Taunton, Jul 9-10, 2012
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Tour Match: Kent v South Africans at Canterbury, Jul 13-15, 2012
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1st Test: England v South Africa at The Oval, Jul 19-23, 2012
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Tour Match: Worcestershire v South Africans at Worcester, Jul 27-28, 2012
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2nd Test: England v South Africa at Leeds, Aug 2-6, 2012
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Tour Match: Derbyshire v South Africans at Derby, Aug 10-11, 2012
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3rd Test: England v South Africa at Lord's, Aug 16-20, 2012
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Tour Match: Gloucestershire v South Africans at Bristol, Aug 22, 2012
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1st ODI: England v South Africa at Cardiff, Aug 24, 2012
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2nd ODI: England v South Africa at Southampton, Aug 28, 2012
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3rd ODI: England v South Africa at The Oval, Aug 31, 2012
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4th ODI: England v South Africa at Lord's, Sep 2, 2012
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5th ODI: England v South Africa at Nottingham, Sep 5, 2012
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1st T20I: England v South Africa at Chester-le-Street, Sep 8, 2012
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2nd T20I: England v South Africa at Manchester, Sep 10, 2012
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3rd T20I: England v South Africa at Birmingham, Sep 12, 2012
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