Johannesburg 2006: How South Africa Chased 435 in the 438 Game

On 12 March 2006, at the New Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg, Australia scored 434/4 in 50 overs. No side had ever reached 400 in a one-day international. By the end of the evening South Africa had made 438/9 and won by one wicket with one ball left. The match decided the five-match series, which stood at 2-2 going in.

The game is usually remembered as one long blur of boundaries. Taken apart, it has a clear shape: a first innings that set a target nobody had seen before, a chase built on one huge partnership, a middle period in which wickets fell steadily, and a last over that turned on three deliveries. This piece looks at each in turn.

Australia’s 434: an innings with no slow phase

Ricky Ponting won the toss and batted. Adam Gilchrist and Simon Katich put on 97 for the first wicket, Gilchrist making 55 from 44 balls. Katich stayed for 79 from 90, adding 119 with Ponting for the second wicket.

Ponting then took over. He made 164 from 105 balls with 13 fours and nine sixes, and reached 150 from 99 balls, at the time the fastest 150 in ODI cricket. Michael Hussey joined him at 216/2 and the pair added 158 for the third wicket before Hussey went for 81 from 51 balls. Andrew Symonds finished unbeaten on 27 from 13.

The damage was spread across the attack. Five of South Africa's seven bowlers conceded eight runs an over or more. Roger Telemachus took 2/87 from his 10 overs; Jacques Kallis's six overs cost 70. Australia's run rate across the full 50 overs was 8.68. The previous highest ODI total had been Sri Lanka's 398/5 against Kenya at Kandy during the 1996 World Cup, so 434 did not just set a new record but beat the old one by 36 runs.

The dressing room and the opening wobble

Between innings, Shaun Pollock later recalled, Kallis told his team-mates that the bowlers had done their job and that Australia were “10 or 15 short”. It is remembered as a joke, but it also described a choice: treat the target as a run rate to be met rather than a wall to be climbed.

The start hardly supported it. Boeta Dippenaar was bowled by Nathan Bracken for 1, and South Africa were 3/1.

Smith and Gibbs: the partnership that made it possible

What followed decided whether the chase was ever realistic. Graeme Smith and Herschelle Gibbs added 187 for the second wicket, taking the score from 3 to 190 before Smith was caught off Michael Clarke for 90 from 55 balls, with 13 fours and two sixes.

Gibbs carried on. He made 175 from 111 balls with 21 fours and seven sixes, which means 126 of his runs came in boundaries. When he was finally caught off Symonds, South Africa were 299/4.

What follows is interpretation rather than recorded fact: the Smith-Gibbs stand mattered as much for the position it created as for the runs themselves. By keeping South Africa close to the required rate through the middle of the innings, it left the lower order needing to keep pace rather than accelerate sharply. That is an easier job at a high-altitude ground; Hussey later spoke of the “thin air” and a short boundary on one side.

The middle order and the steady loss of wickets

From 299/4 the chase began to wobble. AB de Villiers had already gone for 14, caught by Clarke off Bracken. Kallis made 20 before Symonds took a return catch at 327/5. Justin Kemp fell for 13 at 355/6.

Bracken was the one Australian bowler who kept the scoring in check. He took 5/67 from his 10 overs, an economy rate of 6.7 in a match where most bowlers went for far more. Johannes van der Wath hit 35 from 18 balls, including three sixes, before Bracken removed him at 399/7, and Telemachus’s quick 12 from six balls ended, again to Bracken, at 423/8.

The other side of the bowling card belonged to Lewis. His 10 overs cost 113 runs without a wicket, then the most runs conceded in a single ODI innings and the first time a bowler had gone past 100 in a 50-over international. It was the seventh and last ODI of his career. Boucher later said Lewis “never got another chance”.

The last over

South Africa needed seven from the final over, bowled by Brett Lee, with Boucher on strike. Boucher took a single. Andrew Hall hit a four, then tried the same shot again and was caught by Clarke, leaving South Africa 433/9 with two needed.

That brought in Makhaya Ntini, the number 11. He played a single to third man to level the scores and give the strike back to Boucher, who hit the next ball for four. Boucher finished on 50 not out from 43 balls; Ntini’s contribution was one run from one ball, and it was the one that mattered most.

Why the chase worked: a reading of the scorecard

The scorecard suggests three things, offered here as analysis rather than settled fact.

• One partnership did a large share of the work. The 187-run Smith-Gibbs stand produced more than 40 per cent of the 435 needed. Without a stand of that size so early, the later batters would have faced a rate no ODI side had ever met.
• Lower-order hitting covered the collapse. South Africa lost five wickets between 299 and 433, but van der Wath, Telemachus and Hall all scored faster than a run a ball. A tail that could hit kept the chase alive when the specialists fell.
• Australia had too few overs they could control. Bracken’s 10 overs cost 67, but the other five bowlers gave away 359 runs between them in 39.5 overs. On a ground where 434 had just been made, one tight spell could not hold the innings together.

What it left behind

The match ended with 872 runs scored and 26 sixes hit, 14 by Australia and 12 by South Africa. The team-total record did not last long: on 4 July 2006 Sri Lanka made 443/9 against the Netherlands at Amstelveen, with Sanath Jayasuriya scoring 157 from 104 balls.

In interpretive terms, the match marked the moment one-day cricket learned that 400 was a score rather than a fantasy, and it showed that in a chase of that size a captain needs batters who can hit all the way down to number 10.