How cool would it be if someone from the 2000s happened across a flagship smartphone from now? And they discover that this device can call people on video, record and play media with crystal clarity, glide through pictures like it's magic, and act as a digital assistant. It'd blow their minds, right…? Right?

Or will the unfamiliarity end up overwhelming them?

The answers to the questions that the 438 game threw up - Is this for real? Is this what it's come down to? What even is this? - trod unfamiliar, exhilarating lines; but looking back nearly two decades later, the big numbers, which set the game apart at the time, don't seem as revolutionary by themselves.

The 872 runs scored still form the highest match aggregate in an ODI, but the run rate is under 9. T20s, albeit with 100% of the wickets available in an ODI but in the span of 40% of the overs, surpass that routinely.

"I may as well just go for it," Michael Hussey, who joined Ricky Ponting with Australia on 216 for 2 in the 31st over, said to his captain during their 158-run stand. "You just have complete freedom and you know it doesn't matter if you get out."

While that type of thinking is still relevant, if not necessary, the stripping away of caution doesn't require the cushion provided by a rare fast-but-safe start, especially for a current-day team as strong as that 2000s Australia side, in conditions as batting-friendly as those Johannesburg offered.

South Africa's innings fits a modern mould more easily because they were chasing 435. It also helped that Graeme Smith swung the bat like he'd never been beaten, and Herschelle Gibbs Gibbsed like only Gibbs could.

Nightmares are made of these: you score 434 in 50 overs, and lose © Getty Images

They raced to 279 for 2 in 30 overs, about 60 runs ahead of Australia, who were also two down around the same point. Australia had a free pass on the road of excess; South Africa showed even the badlands around it could be treated like they were a highway.

In their book Hitting Against the Spin, analysts Ben Jones and Nathan Leamon write about how the progression of team innings in ODIs changed in the 2010s. The relocation and subsequent removal of the batting powerplay, and the introduction of the two-new-balls rule meant that teams were better off front-loading and adjusting the tempo as an innings progressed rather than accumulating before a late burst. South Africa's innings followed that 2010s model before it was a thing. At the risk of retrofitting, you could say the innings informed the model.

Players and commentators from the match reminisced about it 14 years after, on Cricket Australia's website. Mark Boucher said it "probably changed the way people thought about ODIs". Mike Haysman put forward a more nuanced take. "Everyone just put it down to a unique day," he said, adding that other teams being aggressive with the bat more consistently years later was what actually changed the game.

What that ODI did demonstrate was that batters, whose skills had developed in professional systems that had been functioning for a while, could sustain attacking far more reliably and for far longer than they might have thought, especially with conditions in their favour; that defensive bowling, which over-relied on yorkers, needed a rethink; and perhaps that cricket was ripe for T20, which was in its nascency at the time, and where some of the extremities this game rollercoastered through were part of the design.

In terms of narrative, South Africa winning was a deeply fulfilling climax, but even if they had fallen a few runs short, one could argue that this game would still retain much of its avant-garde quality. Otherwise, Gibbs might not have tweeted on the game's 18-year anniversary, probably from his smartphone, that it felt like it happened yesterday.

Ekanth is a sub-editor with ESPNcricinfo

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

 

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