WICKET! Labuschagne c Harmer b Nortje 14, Australia 45-4
14th over: Australia 45-4 (Smith 15) Nortje on for Jansen, to use sheer speed and hope to unsettle this pair. Cries of anguish as a full ball spears in at the stumps with Smith moving across to the off side. It looks on target to smash his pads in front, but as so often over the years, Smith cruels that hope with a late-arriving bat that redirects the ball to fine leg. Two runs. Then the pull shot, short ball, in the air but on the bounce to Rabada, staying busy fielding at fine leg.
One ball left in the over for Labuschagne to survive… and he doesn’t! Screamer at slip! Drives at a ball that perhaps didn’t require it, a line straight at the stumps, a Boland length that’s quite full but gives itself enough time to move a touch, and this one does. At Nortje’s pace it carries to the cordon, but carries low, and Harmer has to dive across to his left to snare it one-handed.
13th over: Australia 42-3 (Labuschagne 14, Smith 12) Shot from Smith! Straight drive, back past the bowler through a straight mid off, and he really gives that some toe, too. Hard swing of the bat. Then clips a single. Rabada has one ball at Labuschagne and bowls him a beauty! Tiny bit of swing in, tiny bit of seam away, and past the edge.
12th over: Australia 37-3 (Labuschagne 14, Smith 7) Oooff! Punch and counter punch. Labuschagne drives down the ground for four early in the over. Jansen around the wicket beats the edge of Labuschagne’s bat with a ball that holds its line, has the batter jumping and trying to draw the bat inside the line of that ball. “Good nut,” mutters Labs, half to himself, while looking back at the bowler. Two balls later though, he could say “Good shot” to himself. Steps forward into a fuller length ball and drives with complete economy of effort away to the cover boundary. No follow through, just places the bat in the right spot at the right time.
11th over: Australia 29-3 (Labuschagne 7, Smith 5) As his been his wont in this later stage of his career, Smith goes for the cover drive rather than the shuffle to leg. Smashes Rabada for four with that shot, then later goes off his pads for two. This is Smith Version Whatever It Is. He’s not the run glutton of years past. He scores more quickly, while lasting for shorter periods of time. Australia need a long innings today.
10th over: Australia 23-3 (Labuschagne 6, Smith 1) Australian turn back to Smithbuschagne to dig them out of a jam. Smith has a poor record in the later part of Test matches, although he’s played so little in the first three days that perhaps this feels like day two?
WICKET! Head lbw Jansen 14, Australia 22-3
There’s the danger man! Head has been coming up blanks as opener since the Ashes, and that trend carries on. Pretty straightforward from Jansen, left-arm to left-hand, over the wicket and angling slightly in, then seaming further. Head misses his flick to leg and is hit in front of off stump. Stand-in umpire Arno Jacobs thinks he might have nicked that into pad, and gives it not out. A lot of the South Africans agree, there isn’t much of an appeal. But eventually Bavuma reviews, and whoever made that call, they were dead right. Like ordering oneself more wine when the bar’s about to close: three reds.
9th over: Australia 22-2 (Head 14, Labuschagne 6) This is some spell from Rabada. Operating at serious pace, even if there’s a little sauce on those readings. Making Head hop around by bowling at the pads, where Head has had a lot of trouble recently, getting out to leading edges a number of times, when he’s not dragging balls onto the stumps. Eventually he’s able to jump up and stab down a ball to leg, to get off strike. Labuschagne gets about a quarter of his bat on another quick delivery to edge it through square leg for two.
8th over: Australia 19-2 (Head 13, Labuschagne 4) Positive for Labuschagne, but risky, hurling the bat at Jansen’s angle across him and lifting a ball over backward point. There to hit, as they say.
7th over: Australia 15-2 (Head 13, Labuschagne 0) Pop goes the hammer! Split goes the field. Travis Head cover drives Rabada for four, in that rather rustic way of his, more whack than finesse. Full enough to play that shot. Rabada responds with one that whistles past off stump. Full and close to the stumps, and Head lets it go, and that ball might have come back a bit. The speed gun claims that’s almost 155 kilometres an hour. I don’t trust the radar in this series, it’s been clocking all the fast bowlers at speeds that seem unlikely. Within the bounds of possibility for each of them, at their peaks, but I’m not sure that they’re all bowling at the fastest rates of their careers, given the advanced years of the Aussies and Rabada just coming back from injury.
6th over: Australia 11-2 (Head 9, Labuschagne 0) One of the big stories of the day, then, will be Labuschagne, and whether he can build something of substance. He’s been good at times when the team has needed him to bat out time to protect a draw – think Lord’s 2019 and Old Trafford 2023. But the latter of those was also his most recent Test hundred, over three years ago. Has to get those performances out of the scrapbooks and onto the turf in front of him. He begins by leaving everything he can from Jansen.
WICKET! Boland c Rickelton b Jansen 2, Australia 11-2
That’s the first job of the day done for South Africa. Boland has done his initial job, which was to survive until this morning to protect the specialist bats, but he would have dreamed about staying on for a while, absorbing some new-ball overs and annoying the opposition. Instead, as a right hander, he gets a left-arm ball angled across him from Jansen, and reaches for it to try fiddling it through the off side. Nick behind.
5th over: Australia 11-1 (Head 9, Boland 2) We have begun. Travis Head facing Rabada, who took the wicket in the first over last night, then had to be replaced by spin given the light was so bad. This morning Head begins with a boundary, driving him through cover point. He’s not been in great nick, has Head, and needs a score to help his team out here. A second boundary follows, though not much say over it for the batter, who prods forward and gets a thick outside edge through the cordon.
“There’s so much to adore about Temba, for so many reasons, but from a cricketing standpoint, his record as captain is so impressive,” emails Guy Hornsby. “Sure, the difference may reflect his modest returns without the armband, but he’s into Warwick Armstrong territory, and who wouldn’t want to emulate the Big Ship?”
It would take about 13 Tembas to fill the space of one Warwick.
The forecast is decent for today: cool temperatures around 20 degrees, some cloud cover with plenty of scattered sunshine. Hopefully no more rain, though we may not get all of the extended overs in due to the light. We’ll start 15 minutes early and hope to go later than the scheduled stumps, to make up for rain earlier in the match.
In seriousness, that Bavuma innings was one for the ages. Scarcely have we seen such a deviation from the mean, from a player who struggled to convert fifties to one who dominated from such a difficult situation across three, however abbreviated, days of play. Plenty of help from his lower order, but he was the core.
Here’s our match report from yesterday.
Preamble
Alright, friends, we’re set for a big one. Day three in Gqeberha saw the biggest turnaround in a Test match since … well, the previous one in this series in Durban. Is Temba Bavuma the Matt Renshaw of South Africa? Many are saying it. That was quite an astonishing day’s cricket, and it leaves the hosts more than 400 runs in the lead, while the visitors have already lost Nic Maddinson for his second duck in three hits, and Scott Boland is going to resume this morning having been the nightwatch in the late gloom.
For Australia today, the task is simply to bat and bat and bat. Try to eat up as many overs as possible, while keeping the runs going in order to whittle down that deficit from the imposing proportions that it has now. Do they have the technique and temperament to go long? If they can wipe out day four, then day five won’t pose as much threat, and a draw will mean the visitors at least have the series trophy locked up. But if South Africa’s bowlers can sustain some damage in the way Australia’s couldn’t, trouble looms.
This should be a good one, with plenty riding on every wicket. Shall we?
