I completely disagree with Ret that SA should have done better but I can see his overall point even if it is exaggerated.
A core concept of cricket was, and still is to a certain extent, 'winning time'. The idea that players who score quickly and bowlers that have a high strike rate are more important that those that dont as they give the team more time to force a victory. Cricket isnt played in a bubble. Every innings is framed by the game situation. 'How much' sometimes isnt as important as 'how' depending on the game situation. If SA crawl at 2 rpo in the first session today then this is an example of how 'winning time' is being eaten despite the score progressing.
Yeah, you're quite right, it's taken in isolation that the comment is so incorrect.
I have a lot more time for strike rate in a bowler than I do in a batsman. Bowling strike rates are by far the most underrated statistic in cricket. They are, effectively, a measure of how likely the player is to take a wicket when the captain throws the ball to him.
There's a few reasons why I don't rate batting strike rate so highly. Firstly, there are plenty of times when it's better to score your runs slowly than to score them quickly. Defensive cricket, but often you're batting for a draw. The circumstances where taking a wicket slowly is preferable to taking it quickly are so obscure and questionable that they're not even worth mentioning. Secondly, the circumstances where taking wickets quickly is
necessary- i.e, you've got plenty of runs but are running out of time- are a lot more common than those where scoring runs quickly is necessary. That said, a lot has to do with the quality of the bowler. If someone's averaging 45 I'd rather they were economical than had a good strike rate, but if they're averaging 25 the opposite is true.
In this case it's rather ambiguous. Will India be batting time at the end of this match or will it be South Africa? We really have no idea. Last time, South Africa reached 540, Sehwag went nuts on days 3 and 4 and South Africa were left having to bat out the final day to save the test. Yorkshire and Australia didn't generally need to worry about such outcomes. Fast runs were always preferable, because it was almost always the other team praying for rain at the end of a game. In a game like this though, no one really knows who fast scoring will benefit.
