It was shortly before lunch on the final day of the second Test between South
Africa and England. The Bullring was baying for blood. The crowd had come to
watch the slaying of the English at the Wanderers amphitheatre in
Johannesburg.
Michael Atherton, trying to hold the fort, had lost his last specialist
batsman, Robin Smith, caught in the deep. England, needing to bat for the
rest of the day to salvage a draw, were 232 for five. Enter Jack Russell.
“The walk to the wicket in Johannesburg can be quite intimidating,” says the
former England wicketkeeper. “You have to go down some steps which are caged
in and the spectators bang on the roof of the cage. It’s like being in a tin
shed for two minutes with people hitting it with bats. Because of my name,
the spectators also barked at me.”
When Russell reached the middle, he looked at his captain. “I remember his
eyes. The first thing I thought was that this bloke is going to do this.
Crikey, somebody better pull their finger out and stay with him.”
There were 75 overs left and the victory target of 479 would remain an
untouched record. Instead, the pair had to put their heads down and try to
see off the South Africa quick bowlers Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock.
Atherton says: “We didn’t have that much batting left, although we still had
Dominic Cork to come and he could bat a bit. Jack was playing well with the
bat and had taken a lot of catches so that helped with his confidence. I had
faith in him. Although they talk about cricket being a team game, you can
only do your job. My job was to stay there and I hoped someone could stay
with me. You can’t bat for the other person, though.”
It became another chapter in the great rivalry between Atherton and Donald.
“You know you are going to have your work cut out against Mike Atherton,”
says Donald. “Sometimes I have won battles against him but little did I know
this was going to become a lengthy haul.”
Donald had his chance early in the day when Atherton was on 99. A short
delivery was spooned to Gary Kirsten at short leg but spilled. His next ball
was smacked to the square-leg boundary and Atherton could settle again with
a first century against the South Africans under his belt. “The key to
batting for a long time is to break it into small periods of time,” he says.
“You concentrate for 10 seconds when the bowler delivers the ball and then
you relax between balls.”
At the other end, Russell was bristling through his moustache. “The South
Africans knew I was stubborn from a few years before,” he says. “They were
playing Gloucestershire in a tour game in Bristol and I batted on and
refused to give them batting practice shortly before the Test. They didn’t
like it.”
His inspiration in Johannesburg was the memory of a Test against the West
Indies in Barbados in 1990. “We were trying to bat out for a draw on the
last day. At six o’clock it gets too dark to play and I lasted until
twenty-to-six when Curtly Ambrose bowled me and we lost. I didn’t want to go
through that pain again.”
He was delighted with his performance in the Wanderers match, having taken a
world record 11 catches. “I was particularly pleased with a catch I held to
get out Jonty Rhodes off Angus Fraser. There was no first slip and I dived
to my right. I had spent a year working on my stretching with Alan Knott.”
Now, down the final stretch it was up to him to stay with his captain. “I
wanted to block one end and eke away at the time, ball by ball,” he says.
“I had visited Rorke’s Drift and, with an interest in military history, I used
that psychology in Johannesburg. I went back to Rorke’s Drift again after
the game. I loved the thought of battling with broomsticks with knives
attached to the end. We knew what we had to do and played it ball by ball. I
noticed interval breaks but it was all about seeing off the first ball, the
second ball, the third ball . . .”
Atherton recalls: “We played it one ball at a time without thinking too far
ahead. As golfers will tell you, you don’t look at the scoreboard and start
thinking about the final hole. It did get more nervy as we got closer to the
finish line.”
Russell spent 72 minutes on 25 without advancing his total. “I had no
intention of scoring. Late in my innings I hit a boundary and I said to
myself, ‘What are you doing?’ ” Superstition ran through the team. Atherton
wore the same clothes he had donned the day before and, at the end of each
over, Russell would touch the captain’s pads with his bat before the start
of the next over. In the dressing-room things were also getting tense. “At
the start of the partnership everyone was moving around as usual,” says Alec
Stewart. “As it got bigger the more superstitious of us would sit still.
After tea, going into the last session, once you were in position you had to
stay: whether you needed the loo, whether you needed a drink, bad luck. This
was about saving the game for England and nobody moved at all.”
England reached 351 for five. Atherton and Russell had put on 119 in four
hours and 34 minutes with Russell 29 not out. Atherton, unbeaten on 185, had
batted 10 hours and 43 minutes. He describes it as his defining innings.
Hansie Cronje, the South Africa captain, had seen enough and shook hands on
the draw.
“Darrell Hair was the umpire and suddenly took the bails off the stumps,” says
Russell. “I thought: ‘Darrell, what are you doing? How dare you pull the
stumps out. I want to stay batting here all week.’ Only then did I realise
we had drawn.”
Atherton and Russell embraced and ran off the field, elated. “We felt as
though we had won and the South Africans looked as though they had lost,”
says Russell. “Dominic Cork, the next man in, was a nervous wreck for five
hours and at the end of it he was knackered.”
England finished their marathon innings 128 runs short of victory with five
wickets remaining. If it had been a timeless Test they probably would have
triumphed against a tired South Africa attack that had bowled 165 overs. “It
is the first time I have thought about that. Yes, we could have won. It felt
like we had won,” says Russell.
The first, third and fourth Tests were also drawn and South Africa secured the
series with victory in the final match in Cape Town. Atherton says: “It was
a tight series but they probably had the better bowling outfit and in close
series it is the better bowling team that usually comes out on top.”
Russell was distraught. “We had worked so hard during the tour and to lose it
because of one poor session or bad day was difficult. I was pretty nearly in
tears,” says the wicketkeeper who had found the perfect tour destination to
fulfil his three great interests: cricket, painting and military history.
Nowadays, he has laid aside the brushes to help the Gloucestershire team as an
adviser and mentor. Atherton, still playing with a straight bat, puts his
thoughts into words on paper and television.
ESPN Classic, Sky channel 442, will show the fourth Test in 1998 between
England and South Africa at 9.10pm today
