It had all been going so well. Australia reduced South Africa to 4/27 inside 11 overs, making the tourists topple with a barrage of seam bowling that made an already shaky top order look even less secure.
And yet, the pressure was lifted. Perhaps it is to be expected – this is South Africa, ranked third in the world, and not the Sydney Thunder – but the hosts will be a little annoyed that they were unable to complete the decimation.
Scott Boland’s role in his own barely believable underdog story continued with another two wickets for not very much, poking his average back down into single figures and, at a point midway through the first session, it looked like David Warner and Usman Khawaja would be wearing their pads at lunchtime.Instead, a counterattack from Kyle Verreyne, who made a half century, and Temba Bavuma leaves things nicely poised, with Bavuma departing with the partnership up close to 100. Here’s how it unfolded.
Birmingham or Brisbane?
Australia chose to bowl at Brisbane for the first time in a million years and it wasn’t hard to see why. The pitch looked like it had been ripped straight from Kermit the Frog’s back and South Africa’s batting line-up was seemingly also held together by string.
Still, it takes some stones for an Aussie captain not to bat at home, especially at the Gabba. The mind cast back to England last year, under soupy skies and with green on the wicket, deciding that you always batted in Australia no matter what and conditions be damned, before getting skittled. Pat Cummins learned that lesson the easy way.
The adage in England is that one does not look down, rather up, to decide whether to bat or not, and as much as the conditions were more Birmingham than Brisbane, it was the surface that caused the problems here.
Once Australia found their line – and that took a while – they ran through the tourists like a hot knife through Saffa. The first was a little fortunate, as two leg side balls had already gone to the fence for leg byes before one from Mitchell Satarc took an extra bit of bounce and nicked Dean Elgar’s glove, but the next three were superb.
Cummins, uncharacteristically wayward early, clicked into gear and removed Rassie van der Dussen, before Scott Boland did Scott Boland things to get two more. Cam Green, incidentally, did Cam Green things for the first of the Victorian’s pair, with another stunning catch in the gully.
Boland’s second and Australia’s fourth, told the story. It’s hard to remember many LBWs on the opening morning of a Test match at the Gabba – Graeme Smith was the last to be dismissed in such a manner in the first 20 overs, and that was a decade ago – but this pitch was not like a usual one.
This ground has been one of the best in the world for leaving on length, but not anymore.
Erwee bit of a problem with the batting
Much of the narrative thus far in this series has focussed on the batting, or lack thereof, from the South African side. Certainly, at 4/27, it did seem a bit of an issue.
One Elgar departed, it looked even worse, with several rabbit-in-headlight performances that brought back happy memories of Rory Burns, Zak Crawley and a host of recently-departed West Indians.
Sarel Erwee tried too hard, played one he didn’t need to and ended up sending it to Green. Khaya Zondo was the opposite, playing far too tentatively and finding himself pinned.There was an interesting lesson in the brief Proteas resistance either side of lunch, however. We’ve all been watching the Bazball revolution take over Pakistan in recent days, with the England side reborn under their new attacking overlord, and the key tenet of that philosophy is transferring pressure back onto the bowlers.
Kyle Verreyne and Temba Bavuma might not be world beaters, but they did, at least, do a bit of that. Cam Green was brought in and promptly thumped for ten in an over by Verreyne, who seemed intent not to die wondering. He took him for another seven later on and forced Cummins to withdraw Green from the attack.
From then until lunch, every over featured a boundary, save for the last which would have had one had Marnus Labuschagne not performed a miracle swimming move to bat back from the rope.
>Cricket News
%20(3).jpeg)
0 Comments