Sadly, controversy has left Dubai Test tainted

South Africa are the world's top-ranked Test team, but the ball-tampering controversy will taint their image, writes Paul Radley.

It is unlikely the Dubai Test will be remembered for Saeed Ajmal's six-wicket haul or South Africa's first innings batting partnership between Graeme Smith and AB de Villiers. Marwan Naamani / AFP

When Pakistan reached the same score, 99, as they made in their dire first innings, the column in the score book denoting extras was as spartan as you would expect from the world’s best team.

There were no leg byes, no byes, no no-balls, and just the solitary wide. Then, in the new space that has been added to score books only over the past decade, was the glaring entry: five penalty runs.

Extras are an oddity in cricket, as they demarcate the few actions over the course of a match from which no one really derives any joy.

A leg bye is just a waste of time. Byes just mean you should steer clear of the wicketkeeper for a while. A wide does nobody any good, either. The batsman does not benefit, and the bowler just feels shame.

Talking of shame, you would think the Proteas are feeling a fair bit of it themselves right now.

Umpires do not take lightly the decision to fine teams runs for tampering with the ball. They know the ramifications, and the fact there are significant, wider issues.

Ian Gould, whose duty it was to signal the five-run penalty, has had the gumption to give Sachin Tendulkar out on 99 in the past. It does not get much more flammable than that in cricket.

The former England wicketkeeper well knows a microscope is held against every action he and his colleagues make.

So if you are going to accuse a team of ball-tampering, they must have been certain.

All the more since the Darrell Hair furore of 2006, when Pakistan, Friday’s apparent victims, were penalised.

Why would the world’s No 1 team possibly feel the necessity to cheat – which is essentially what the tampering charge accuses them of doing?

Test cricket endures because of the memorable feats of its lead protagonists. Will this Test be remembered for the seemingly inevitable monstrous win for a South Africa side who had seemed down and out in Abu Dhabi last week?

Or Graeme Smith’s fifth double-century in Test cricket, a monumental feat of skill and spirit over a doubting body in exhausting conditions?

Or Imran Tahir’s celebratory sprints toward the boundary every time he took a wicket in a Test he might have feared would never again come his way?

Or a bit-part player, who has barely featured in the series otherwise, rubbing the ball against the zip of his trousers?

For what will the Dubai Test of October 2013 be remembered? Has it been irrevocably sullied?

Time will tell, of course.

But there is a fair chance the stain on the match, and the world’s No 1 team, will be harder to wash clean than the ball markings on Faf du Plessis’s white trousers.