A close-fought but rain-shortened opening day of the series ended with honours just about even. Given the chance to bowl first by Hashim Amla, Dale Steyn had taken the early wickets of Alastair Cook, for a duck, and Alex Hales for 10 in a blistering opening burst, and the off-spinner Dane Piedt removed Joe Root with his first delivery, leaving England shakily placed on 49 for three.
That England revived to reach the close on 179 for four, was down to the immense determination of Nick Compton, who has faced 179 balls in making an unbeaten 63, and James Taylor, who made a contrastingly sparky 70 before he edged Steyn shortly before stumps, the pair having added 125 for the fourth wicket.
England chose not to send in a nightwatchman and there was just time for Ben Stokes to belt the off-spinner over mid-on to the boundary before the light closed in. Steyn, with three for 29, was superb but the other South Africa seamers had trouble getting anything from a pitch that has little to offer them once the hardness goes from the ball, although there were already signs of considerable turn: Moeen Ali might well get a lot of bowling and have an important frontline role to play rather than just hold an end for the pacemen.
Attrition was the order of the day. Aside from a spell either side of tea, when the string-bean Morne Morkel went round the wicket and tested out the middle of the pitch with three men out on the hook, and some reverse swing towards the day’s end, the South African pacemen, allowed first crack with the ball on a mizzly morning, largely stuck to their tried and tested channel 18 inches outside off stump and demanded the batsmen chase it.
If it was a strategy designed to test the patience of batsmen, then England, in trouble early on after the compelling new ball opener from Steyn, had the antidote in Compton, whose singlemindedness at the crease, bordering on self-absorption, has never been in doubt whatever the reasons for his apparent exile from the Test team might have been. With no obvious swing to worry about, ball after ball was flagged through to the keeper. It was a game of patience: who would crack?
On this day, it was not Compton, whose score accumulated by stealth while at the other end Taylor, another picking up on a Test career once more, provided an animated counterpoint, busy and scampering, less intense without being obviously less diligent.
He had had a strangely embarrassing start to the day when, through mischievous design or accident, it transpired that the mascot whose hand he held when the teams walked out for the pre-match anthems was taller than him, so that he had to stand to one side when lined up for fear of being obscured. Small batsmen are difficult to bowl to, however, their judgment of length necessarily good where tall batsmen can commit to the front foot, good cutters and pullers, but quick on the drive when bowlers are forced to pitch that much further up.
There was a time when Taylor played too much around his front pad for comfort but here he was straight in defence, whipping the ball away to leg only when milking the mundane off-spin of Piedt. By the time he had reached his half century he had hit eight boundaries, with a mixture of drives, pulls, a couple of well-placed sweeps and one flat-batted swat straight back past Morkel.
It was not the start to the series that England would have liked but something that might have been expected given the conditions. Overnight rain meant a start delayed by half an hour (there was a further stoppage because of lightning and rain after half an hour of play) and when the covers were removed, it showed a sullen looking strip, damp-looking rather than green. The pitch has a reputation for being sluggish and the new ball would be particularly important, precisely the sort of circumstance tailor-made for Cook .
He was to encounter Steyn champing at the bit after his lay-off for injury, steaming in from the northern Umgeni end. Of the 11 balls he was to face, Cook allowed eight to pass through to the keeper. Two he met with the middle of a defensive bat. But the final one, dragged back a touch, wobble-seamed, was one that Cook felt compelled to play. Maybe he could have left it on length, but it shaded away off the pitch, Cook half-edged, half steered it and Dean Elgar took the catch at second slip. Steyn’s face contorted in his celebration, his eyes bulging manically. It was a big wicket with which to start.
Compton had made his way determinedly to the middle, and saw his first ball come back at him, and clear the stumps. From then on, he played an immaculate defensive innings, watchful but punctuated with a couple of excellent back-foot shots, through backward point, and square of the wicket and, once, Morkel was off-driven.
He had seen Hales, in his debut innings, dismissed by Steyn immediately on the first resumption, the batsman unable to resist chasing a wideish ball having made what looked to be a solid confident start.
There was a jaunty innings from Root, who angled his first ball to the third man boundary, clobbered Kyle Abbott meatily over midwicket for six and was looking in top form until he played back to the first ball from Piedt, and was lbw as it turned in to him, a close call by the umpire Aleem Dar.
