MINING FOR GOLD

No. 6 Athball at The Oval

Next in our series exploring previously unseen data from the CricViz archive, Rob Smyth revisits England’s stunning victory against South Africa at The Oval in 1994, a glorious outlier spearheaded by a tearaway on a mission

ROB SMYTH Author and freelance sportswriter

In association with

At Edgbaston last month, when England reached a target of 82 in 7.2 overs, nary an eyelid was batted. Ben Stokes’ team have normalised the kind of attacking cricket, particularly with the bat, that was once reserved for the PlayStation. The Edgbaston game against West Indies was the 13th win under Stokes in which England scored at 4.5 runs per over across the entire match.

Twas hardly ever thus. Before Stokes’s captaincy, England had only ever done it seven times, four of them under Michael Vaughan. The list also includes perhaps the most shockingly brilliant England performance of our lifetime.

Thirty years ago this month, Devon Malcolm flattened South Africa with an awesome display of fast bowling, taking 9-57 in three spells of volcanic heat. But that was only one part of an astonishingly aggressive performance which, in the context of English cricket at the time, stood out like a straight answer on Question Time.

You can’t really quantify the primal thrill of watching England, a mid-table team, suddenly lay waste to a very good South Africa with an exhibition of leadpipe cruelty. But the numbers add context and, more importantly, confirm how thrillingly unprecedented it was.