2oceansvibe’s bi-weekly sports columnist, Sean Wilson, considers the records Hashim Amla and the Proteas may have been able to achieve had they been playing a “timeless” test match.

Haroon Lorgat, the recently deposed ICC CEO, suggested that the future World Test Championship may be decided by means of a “timeless” test (i.e. the contest will last until there is a winner instead of the current five day maximum period). If that ever happened to be the case, ask yourself why would any captain declare at all in a match like that. Before this last test match between South Africa and England, the common consensus was that staging a timeless test to decide the world number one spot was just not viable.

Now after seeing that run deluge from Hashim Amla and company, one can only imagine what would have happened if Graeme Smith had no need to declare. South Africans should now be of the opinion that “timeless” tests might seem impractical at first, but they could produce even bigger batting records, as well as being fiendishly hysterical.

In order for South Africa to force a victory, Smith had to declare and leave Amla unbeaten on 311. While it will rightfully go down as a monumental innings, imagine what score he could have achieved if he had the freedom to keep on batting. Who doesn’t want to see the limits of his concentration? For those of you who think test cricket is too long-winded to be entertaining as it is, answer this: What South African doesn’t want to see Stuart Broad bowl so many overs that he falls red-cheeked to the ground in total exhaustion, tucking himself into the foetal position while he cries and mumbles “I want my mummy…”?

While Amla’s innings is currently the highest test match score by a South African, it’s only 20th on the all time list. It’s not even the highest score achieved at The Oval. That record is still held by the late Sir Leonard Hutton who scored 364 for England against Australia in 1938. Before you start imagining Sir Hutton’s ghost looking at Amla’s feeble score, tut-tutting and nostalgically pointing out, “In my day, we used to cash in once we got a start”, bear in mind that Hutton’s innings was achieved in a “timeless” test.

It was the deciding test of the series in 1938, and back then the match wasn’t over until a winner was established (or until the touring team’s ship back home would leave). Hutton opened the batting in an innings where captain Wally Hammond waited until England had reached 903/7 before he declared for no reason, other than sheer boredom.

Since this test match took place just before the Second World War, it’s safe to assume that watching England scratch around obdurately for 335 overs on a TV set in Berlin was clearly the last straw for Adolf Hitler. The moral of the story: timeless tests might not always be a good thing.

Who knows how many runs Hashim Amla would’ve ended up on if he was allowed to bat on? If that’s not enough food for thought for you, imagine how many runs Jacques Kallis would have scored if he was given the opportunity to show off his new found lack of jitteriness he has when he’s in the 180s. There was a record that came out of this test match that might not have been achieved had it been a timeless test. This was only the 5th time in test match history that a team has won a match while only losing two wickets (one of which was when South Africa beat Bangladesh in 2003).

While this achievement might have been risked, the public wouldn’t have lost much. After all, it’s not a record that South Africa holds outright, and every armchair cricket purist knows that a winning statistic is cheapened if it (a) includes a “Zimbladesh” game and (b) includes a big score from Boeta Dippenaar. There is one record that would have undoubtedly been broken if it was a “timeless” test.

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