Come on Aussie, come on, come on - and win already

Since South Africa made a hash of their first innings they have been in the business of damage control, which seldom works against opponents as resolutely efficient as Australia.

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE at Kingsmead

HURRY up and win, Australia. No other outcome seems likely in the first test. All that’s still not known is when South Africa’s defeat will be complete.

Sometime today is a distinct possibility, what with the visitors 402 runs ahead at a ground where teams have only twice successfully chased more than 300 to win.

Both of those games featured the Australians — they won one, South Africa the other — and both were dead rubbers.

This match is very much alive. Or it was until South Africa made a hash of their first innings, which amounted to a not even mediocre 162.

Since then they have been in the business of damage control, which seldom works against opponents as resolutely efficient as Australia.

They were 213/9 in their second innings when bad light forced the close 20 overs early in a batting performance that, Cameron Bancroft’s 53 apart, was about guts more than glory in conditions that are only going to become more difficult for batting.

Keshav Maharaj wheeled away for 28 overs to add figures of 3/93 to the 5/123 he took in Australia’s first innings of 351 to become South Africa’s leading spinner in terms of wickets taken in a Kingsmead test since readmission.

Morne Morkel overcame flooding his engine with eagerness in the first innings, and in his early forays in the second, to take 3/42 after tea yesterday.

Worthy though those efforts were, they were also footnotes in the more compelling narrative that Australia have been the better team by some distance on all three days.

South Africa’s batting and bowling in this match have been scarred with the consequences of asking for overly fast pitches in the series against India last month.

Even though they are now on a more recognisably South African surface, the kind Australians grow up on, their batsmen had already been robbed of their confidence in their footwork and decision-making.

That this didn’t apply to AB de Villiers on Friday, when he scored an unbeaten 71 — almost half the total — only emphasises his exceptionalism.

South Africa’s bowlers looked like they expected the pitch to do more than its fair share of the work, like it did too often against the Indians.

And when it didn’t their aggression curdled into frustration, which was turned into runs by the grateful Australians.

Maharaj’s has shown admirable discipline in the face of all that, and Morkel worked out what he needed to do eventually. Kagiso Rabada, too, kept the high octane faith.

But, with every run added as a sadly familiar gloom descended on Kingsmead, all present knew the inconvenient truth: barring a miracle Australia will win.