Source : ABC NEWS
Alex Carey breaks the game open with a spectacular take, Pat Cummins confuses Beau Webster for Muttiah Muralitharan, and Josh Hazlewood’s career-best wins it for Australia.
Here are the quick hits from the final day of the first Test between Australia and South Africa.
1. Smith returns to the field
The Australians were worried they might have to push to victory without the fielding brilliance of Smith. (AP: Themba Hadebe)
After not taking to the field after Pat Cummins’s tea time declaration on day four, there were serious concerns that Australia would have to push for victory without the fielding brilliance of Steve Smith.
The Australia vice-captain was hit in the helmet by an Anrich Nortje bouncer while batting and was held back over fears of a delayed concussion.
But Australian fans would have been delighted to have seen Smith out on the field and warming up ahead of the final day’s play, with the slipper supreme right to re-assume his role in the cordon.
Speaking on Fox Cricket, Mitch Starc said Smith appeared to have “the light back in him” and he certainly seemed to as he snared a sharp chance at first slip, his fifth of the match, to get rid Kyle Verreynne in the 67th over.
2. Carey’s screamer starts the rot
Alex Carey’s brilliant catch ended a troublesome Wiaan Mulder-Aiden Markram partnership. (Supplied: Fox Cricket)
Australia tried a lot of tricks to break the Aiden Markram-Wiaan Mulder partnership on the final morning of the Test at Kingsmead.
For 154 balls, near misses elicited plenty of “Ooh”s and maybe even the occasional “Aah”, but little more despite some sensational bowling.
Then, in the space of four balls, everything changed.
Josh Hazlewood swung one towards the pads of Mulder, facing his 110th delivery, and it kept going down the leg side.
Mulder tried to help it on its way to fine leg as he’d done many times before, but only managed to get a faint tickle on it and that wasn’t enough to evade Alex Carey.
Australia’s phenomenal wicketkeeper shuffled and leapt to his left, sticking his gloved hand out and plucking the ball out of the air just centimetres off the grass.
The partnership broken, wicket-taking suddenly looked straightforward as Matt Renshaw nicked off Kyle Verreynne just three balls later to allow the Aussies to breathe a little easier.
3. Australia’s shocking review
Webster would have needed to produce some serious turn for it to be a successful review. (Fox Cricket)
With six overs still remaining between lunch and the new ball, Cummins had time to kill.
The Australia captain decided that cycling through his part-time spinners would be the most efficient way to get the 80th over.
But with the pitch offering some substantial turn and the South African tail exposed, the Australian fielders were an in excitable mood.
And in the first over after the break, that excitement was channelled into one of the most questionable reviews of Cummins’s captaincy career.
Beau Webster, who has never been a big spinner of the ball to start with, pitched his off break far enough from the stumps that Jansen felt comfortable kicking it away.
Webster would have had to have transformed into a prime Muttiah Muralitharan to have gotten that one back towards the pegs — and he hadn’t. The DRS projected the ball to be missing by a considerable distance.
4. Hazlewood’s career-best figures
Hazlewood ripped through the South African lower order. (Getty Images: Gerhard Duraan/Gallo Images)
Jansen and Markram made it to the new ball, but things went downhill pretty quickly after Starc and Hazlewood got their hands on the fresh cherry.
Hazlewood, who had started things off with the first two wickets of the innings on day four, produced a sensational 85th over double strike to all but end the South African resistance.
First, he found some movement off the pitch to castle Jansen, then, he procured some extra bounce to have Simon Harmer caught for a three-ball duck.
Mitch Starc then got in on the act to have the brilliant Aiden Markram caught behind on review, before Hazlewood fittingly ended the Test with the dismissal of Anrich Nortje.
The Proteas had lost their final four wickets for five runs and Hazlewood had career-best figures, with his 6-49 eclipsing the 6-67 from Bengaluru in 2017.
5. Markram in his element
Aiden Markram has a habit of doing this to Australia. (Getty Images: Gerhard Duraan/Gallo Images)
Every time Aiden Markram bats in Tests against Australia, many of us find ourselves perplexed by his Test average in the mid-30s.
But all the ingredients were there to turn him into a modern Graeme Pollock.
Markram averages over 60 against Australia, comfortably highest among any of his Test opponents. His fourth-innings average is in the mid-40s — for reference, Steve Smith’s run-chase average is 31.65. And, among grounds he’s played more than two Tests on, Kingsmead is his best.
Australians may remember him for his fourth-innings 143 in Durban back in 2018, but more recently for a match-winning 136 in the World Test Championship final run chase last year.
And Markram was almost chanceless as he held South Africa’s innings together with a marathon 237-ball 75, before his late dismissal spelled the end for the Proteas.
