Live: Aussie attack hunting wickets on day three against South Africa

He bowls one ball to David Bedingham that is defended and immediately goes to work changing the field.

Drop and run to the leg side by Bedingham and that’s the 50 up for South Africa.

The rotation of bowlers, particularly the use of Nathan Lyon, will be very interesting today and going forward.

Four, but Hazlewood is right in the game. Aiden Markram pushes at a good-length ball and drives well through cover, but there was a moment there where it looked like maybe he hadn’t quite got far enough into the delivery.

Short from Hazlewood and a pull shot is toe-ended by Markram. That’s two balls in a row that he’s been just a little early on. Is it something in the deck?

Another edge goes to ground and this Beau Webster manages to reel it in.

EDGED! And it flies over the slips as Cummins bangs in a short one and Bedingham goes into self-preservation mode, popping one up that races away for four.

A few chances and half chances created early from the Aussies here.

Full and wide, and Bedingham drives at it as it swings in, collecting the inside edge and trickling away to the leg side. This is probing bowling from Cummins and Hazlewood.

Four. Another short one but this time Bedingham hooks well and the ball races to the short square leg boundary.

Markram gets a look at what he thinks is a short ball and drops his hands out of the way, but the ball doesn’t really get up. Not sure if he misread where the ball pitched or if it just didn’t bounce much.

Four! An early comprehensive boundary by Markram, clipping between mid-wicket and mid-on for four runs.

The metronomic Hazlewood is unbowed as he keeps banging away on a length, peppering in the occasional bouncer.

He’s right on the pads to start and Bedingham drives wide of mid-off, taking a quick single as Mitchell Starc fields awkwardly. He only just got bat on that. Cummins thought he was in the LBW game for a millisecond.

Huge shout for LBW as Cummins sneaks one past the inside edge and the Aussies are up. It looks like a decent shout, but it’s denied by the umpire, and captain Cummins says no to a review. It hit the back thigh pad of a man nailed to the crease so I wouldn’t be surprised if the ball was clipping the top of the bails, but certainly not enough to overturn the decision.

Juuuuuust missing, says the ball tracking …

Good bowling from Cummins, seaming in and away as he stays on the stumps and pads of this pair.

EDGED! But Aiden Markram gets away with one as the ball drops short and bounces awkwardly past Beau Webster at third slip and away for a boundary.

After the false stroke on the back foot outside off, Markram leaves and then defends solidly on the front foot. Maybe the first delivery jolted him into focus.

A really tight leave from Markram as Hazlewood goes perilously close to the top of off stump.

When Ryan Rickelton nicked off to the ninth ball of South Africa’s innings, more than a few of us were surely eyeing a top-order collapse last night.

Instead, an early light reading and some determined batting by Aiden Markram and David Bedingham kept the Aussie seamers at bay and the Proteas looked pretty comfy out there.

The pitch looked a lot flatter yesterday than on day one and I’d expect it to be an even better batting deck today, but it will be interesting to see if Nathan Lyon can get much out of it after South Africa’s spinners struggling to the tune of 1-146 from 51.2 overs in the first innings of the match.

An AFL star made a cameo as Renshaw and Lyon went better than Bradman in the midst of an historic recovery effort on day two.

Check it out in our quick hits.

There are still plenty of questions facing the Australian men’s Test XI …

Can anyone in the team open the batting? Where does Cameron Green fit back in? Is Marnus Labuschagne back in some sort of form?

But in Matt Renshaw’s innings on days one and two, the man who worked his way back into the team with limited-overs form showed Australia’s batters how to play proper Test match cricket.

Matt Renshaw looks a very assured cricketer these days.

Would that have still been the case if the selectors had stuck with him when he was just 20 years old? Or would his confidence have been sapped if he struggled in the big leagues?

We can’t know, but if all roads led to that 190 on day two, the road can’t have been that wrong.