Key events
15th over: Australia 56-0 (Renshaw 17, Head 39) Head keeps going, he’s past his first-innings opening average now. Belts Mulder square of the wicket on the off side, off a length, then rotates strike. Renshaw sees out the rest, though a late yorker challenges him. This is a good system for Australia: Head 4, Head 1, Renshaw block.
14th over: Australia 51-0 (Renshaw 17, Head 34) Smashed by Head! Coetzee gives pace on the ball, Head gives pace off the bat. Drops down low and demolishes the first ball of the over through cover. Second ball? Up and over! Less controlled, perhaps, like the earlier one that he tried to play so close to his body, but gets enough of a piece of it. Then, smartly, doesn’t try to triple down, but takes a single. Renshaw has been sitting on 17 for six overs, and sees out this one to make it seven.
13th over: Australia 42-0 (Renshaw 17, Head 25) Over to Wiaan Mulder, who was crucial with the ball in Gqeberha, taking big wickets at big times. He’s a shorter and skiddier bowler than his stablemates, so he can surprise with a different trajectory, as well as swing early or seam later. A single from his first over.
12th over: Australia 41-0 (Renshaw 17, Head 24) Coetzee to Renshaw, that’s quick! He cranks up the speed gun that over, through the high 140s and eventually hits 150. The downside for him, around the wicket to the left-hander, is that everything is too far outside off stump to make Renshaw play, bar the last ball that draws a defensive push. That miss means there is no contact of bat on ball in the over.
11th over: Australia 41-0 (Renshaw 17, Head 24) Travis! He does a Renshaw impression facing Rabada, a very light leave based on the length of the ball. Nipping back but going over. Even this new monkish mindset though won’t stop Head hitting a half volley, and with almost no foot movement, all eye, he does exactly that, just the slightest shuffle towards the off side, but he strikes that through the covers to end the over well.
10th over: Australia 37-0 (Renshaw 17, Head 20) Time for a change, here is Gerald Coetzee. He had the broad black headband on in the ODIs, but has gone for the classic traditional white headband for Tests, just as I’m sure Terror Turner and Demon Spofforth used to wear. He, like many before him, starts his day being cut for four by Head, always taking on the width with a right-armer’s angle across the lefty. And then, like many before him, almost bowls Head dragging on, this time the batter getting lucky. It’s become a genuine problem for Head in the past year.
9th over: Australia 32-0 (Renshaw 17, Head 15) Travis Head getting off strike facing Rabada may well be a great move for Australia. A glance achieves that, hopping and poking the ball away, allowing Renshaw to soak up most of the over. As a batting team, you just want Rabada’s spell done with no damage. A bit of damage to Renshaw’s shoulder, as he wears a short ball and smiles it off. Plays the line well, too, even when the ball does deck away. Not many have done, but Rabada has produced a couple, as has Jansen.
8th over: Australia 31-0 (Renshaw 17, Head 14) There’s been a lot of talk about Head as an opener, some people saying he should go back to five where he prospered, others scoffing and pointing as his good overall numbers, averaging near 50. The thing is that all of his big scores as opener have come in the second innings, when the match situation is clearer. He averages literally twice as much as he does in his first innings, when conditions are usually tougher. He’s averaging 67 vs 33 on that split.
So today is a chance for a big first-innings score. Although, given its the second innings of the match, this still isn’t the same as a tricky session-one challenge on the first day, with the ball moving around in the gloom. In the first innings of matches, rather than his first team innings, he averages 23 opening.
Adds a single here, struck to deep point but they have a sweeper back. So it’s Renshaw who does the boundary scoring, playing a fine on-drive from Jansen.
7th over: Australia 26-0 (Renshaw 13, Head 13) Three slips and two gullies for Rabada bowling to Renshaw, after Head slips away from strike again. Renshaw happy to leave where he can. He made his first impression in Test cricket at the age of 20 by leaving a lot of balls at Adelaide Oval, and in the peak “play your natural game” era of Aussie bats booming drives to slip, people fell upon his innings like desert-walkers quenching thirst at an oasis.
6th over: Australia 25-0 (Renshaw 13, Head 12) South Africa really blew a chance after that opening stand yesterday. It was 158 in quick time, and they looked on track to make the biggest score against Australia after being sent in. That record is 479, built on the famous Viv Richards 208 at the MCG in 1984. Instead of that, South Africa got nowhere near it, and their 329 all out finished up 17th on that list.
Head flashes outside off again, and again finds the boundary Jansen now the bowler wincing. That wasn’t even wide, Head leaned back to create room for his hands, and took the ball almost from the line of off stump. Again, follows it up by dashing the single, challenging Bavuma’s whirring legs. Renshaw leaves.
5th over: Australia 20-0 (Renshaw 13, Head 7) Streaky bacon! That’s for breakfast in the Head household. Width from Rabada, nearly caught at gully, though a gully for Head is set deeper, more like a conventional backward point. Head flashes the bat at this width and steers it past the fielder’s right hand by a metre or two. Next ball, tries to uppercut over the slips a ball that’s too close to his body. Things that are not conventional for opening the batting, but nor is he, and seeing the Ackerman and Markram stand yesterday will have only reiterated to Head that he can score quickly out here. Bowlers in the game, though. He plays more conventionally by taking a single to cover.
4th over: Australia 15-0 (Renshaw 13, Head 2) Some luck for Renshaw there, edges the ball along the ground behind point while looking to turn it to leg. It rolls down to the fence, with fielders up around the bat early. He ends the over with a more convincing shot for four, clipped off a leg-stump line, past the short leg catcher, lovely timing. There was a good leave in between those, too, a ball that he leaves on length even though it’s angling in, and goes over the off bail. Well over. Considering that he was bowled while leaving in Gqeberha, that’s brave.
3rd over: Australia 7-0 (Renshaw 5, Head 2) In typical Travis Head style, he hasn’t faced many balls, doesn’t look convincing with the shot, but scores runs. Two of them from a thick inside edge off Rabada, into the leg side, and almost four more as he reaches very wide to flirt with a ball outside off, lucky not to middle rather than nick it, but unlucky to find backward point.
2nd over: Australia 5-0 (Renshaw 5, Head 0) All 12 balls so far have been faced by Renshaw, after that sixth-ball single. He carries on as he played in Durban, leaving wherever possible. Jansen does beat his edge at one stage, getting movement away, but Renshaw doesn’t follow the ball. When Jansen ends the over going short at the body, Renshaw gets gloves underneath it. Very organised defensive approach to the over.
1st over: Australia 5-0 (Renshaw 5, Head 0) Lovely bounce and carry from Rabada with the new ball. Two left-handers for him to aim at. The sun is shining again, the sky brilliantly blue, it looks a lovely day on the Cape. You’d best believe the mountain is hulking over the shoulder of the ground like a suspicious bouncer. Rabada doesn’t use the bouncer himself, comes around the wicket after a few balls but bowls a low full toss, and Renshaw with placement rather than effort deflects his square drive behind point for four, then takes one.
It’s Kagiso Rabada firing up the engines! Renshaw in his sights. This is good stuff.
We’re about to start play in Cape Town, so let’s have at it.
Meanwhile, Cricket Australia’s AGM has been the forum for them to announce a big annual profit, which they’re also using to further argue that they should privatise part of their operation because they need the money. Funny how their answer to every scenario is the same one.
While we’re on the subject of former England bowlers, always worth considering the one who probably still believes, in his heart of hearts, that he should still be a current England bowler – and perhaps he’s right. James Anderson, bless him, still kicking, via Emma John.
Our reader Rowan Sweeney suggested posting this article, purely as an exercise in underlining that Chris Woakes is a solid human being. I’ll do that because those of us working at this joint think the same of Ali Martin.
Here’s our match report from yesterday.
For a time, it was heading up there with the worst. David Gower at Leeds in 1989, when Australia topped 600 and declared. Nasser Hussain in Brisbane, 2002, when Australia were 364 for two by the end of the day. Edgbaston 2005, where England lamped 407 from 80 overs. Those were the looming comparisons for captains deciding to bowl at the toss, after Pat Cummins did the same in the third Test at Cape Town, only for South Africa’s openers to smash 140 by lunch. Yet, by day’s end, Australia had taken 10 for a further 189, Mitchell Starc destroying the tail with four wickets in six balls, 329 all out constituting a serious Australian comeback.
For those pondering why that batting sequence would be questionable, consider this.
Travis Head: lots of runs as opener in his second innings of matches, bugger all the first time he bats.
Matt Renshaw: was supposed to be the opener, then got bumped to five, made a ton first Test, had a poor second Test, and now has been moved back up top.
Marnus Labuschagne: playing for his spot, no hundreds in three years, keeps making 30s on this tour and then getting out.
Josh Inglis: is not Steve Smith, who is out with a stiff neck.
Cameron Green: coming back in after an injury layoff, still trying to prove himself as the genuine article with the bat at this level.
Alex Carey: mostly poor run since moving to six, averaging 20 in his last seven Tests.
Cooper Connolly: spare-change pick to have him batting at seven, in the squad as a future talent, never made a first-class ton.
Preamble
Geoff Lemon
Hello, friends. You’re back. Why wouldn’t you be? Day one of this third Test in Cape Town was a barnstormer. How often do you see a team sent in, none for a hundred at lunch, and all out by stumps? It twisted, it turned, it rocked, it rolled, and it had Double Richard umpiring duties in the middle for Dick Kettleborough’s 100th Test. We can at least guarantee the continuation of the umpiring part, barring any more illness absences like the one that took out Chris Gaffaney in the previous match.
Australia ended the day happier, after Mitch Starc’s absurd ending burst of 6 for 10, and South Africa started it happier, after Aiden Markram and Marques Ackerman flayed everything in the first session. Now everyone will have had a night’s sleep to calm down, and then it will be time to see whether Australia’s heavily rejigged batting lineup can put anything reasonable together.
