South Africa's slow, sudden victory over Australia reminded us why Test cricket is special New York Times (Online) Nick Miller If you wanted a single match to encapsulate the curiosity and the tension and the general brilliance of Test cricket, then South Africa's thrilling win over Australia in Gqebhera might be it. This was a match where very little happened for the best part of two days. Rain ensured only 12.2 of the theoretical 90 overs were possible on day one. That's so little play that, in most places around the world, anyone who bought a ticket will have got a full refund. Day two was slightly better, although they only got another 31 overs in. So for the first two of five days, only about 15 per cent of the planned play was possible. For much of the history of the game, this would have almost certainly ensured a meandering draw, an unsatisfactory conclusion to the second in a three-match series, meaning the final encounter in Cape Town would not be an exciting decider but an underwhelming contractual fulfilment. But. despite losing over a third of the match to the weather (another session was washed out on the final morning), it turned out to be a classic. South Africa (missing a key bowler, Anrich Nortje, with a groin injury) hunted down the remaining wickets as Australia (who had a key batter, Steve Smith, restricted by a neck injury) resisted stoutly in parts, largely thanks to the unlikely figure of Scott Boland. This was a perfect example of how the joy of Test cricket lies in how it can move both quickly and slowly. It lasts — or should last — five days, broadly progressing at a leisurely pace. And yet there are sudden, sometimes violent shifts. You can lose your grip on a game like that old line about people going bankrupt: gradually, then suddenly. A case in point: in the middle of the third day, South Africa — who had lost the first Test — had just 110 runs on the board, with six wickets down. The idea that they could post a respectable score and then still have time to bowl Australia out was ludicrous. A draw was their absolute best case scenario, hoping that they could cling on and avoid defeat and go to the final Test with some hope of salvaging something. All over. Done. 2-0 to Australia, series finished with a game to go. And yet, by about the same time the following day, via a combination of a brilliant innings by the magnificent Temba Bavuma, and some deadly work by the South African fast bowlers, Australia were in disarray and it was they who were praying for the draw. Which brings us to another unique element of the game, where the draw is valued perhaps more than in any other sport. In the context of this series it would have been unsatisfactory from a neutral perspective, but for Australia, by the the closing stages it was as valuable as any victory and they were scrapping for it accordingly. It's one of the things that strangers to the sport often don't understand, that a single match can go on for five days and at the end, still nobody wins. But if you want to get an idea of the value of a draw, and how it can create just as much tension as a 'positive' result, all you needed to do was watch the closing stages of this one. That word, tension. There's nothing like Test cricket for holding tension. Whereas with most sports, the excitement comes from fast-paced action, here it emanates from its slowness. It's not the bit of the rollercoaster where you travel at 100mph, it's the bit where it stops and holds you over the edge, staring into the void. Imagine that, but for about three hours, before something happens to release that tension (briefly). The last few hours here were exactly that — the equivalent of being dangled over the edge and held there, before Wiaan Mulder, in theory the least intimidating of South Africa's quick bowlers, made the crucial breakthroughs, removing Travis Head for a remarkable 121 and then Boland for a equally remarkable 40 from 166 balls. While Test cricket is slow, and its slowness can be a virtue, it's much less slow than it used to be, and this game showed the positive side of its increasing speed over recent years: there have been 28 two-day Test matches in the history of the game, and a third of them have come in the last decade . This, don't forget, is a form of the sport that has been going since 1877. Had the none of the play been lost, and it was all over before the end of the third day, it might have inspired another round of fretting about the state of Test cricket, more evidence that nobody knows how to bat anymore and the empty calories and instant gratification of T20 have rotted everyone's brains. In this case, the more rapidly moving game was what made it a spectacle, produced a positive result and made the series even better. And so, the brilliance of Test cricket. For anyone sceptical about it, this match had a bit of everything. If you have ever questioned why people still bother with it, the answers were all here.