Aussie collapse gives SA the edge

A Test that seemed surely to have escaped South Africa’s grasp an hour or so into the second day now somehow fits loosely in their grip thanks to a now familiar Australian batting stumble.

After openers David Warner (97) and Shaun Marsh (63) carried their team to within less than 100 runs of their first innings target, the remainder of their batting brotherhood failed to find a yelp.

And even though the tourists have lost their best fast bowler to the recurrence of a shoulder injury, the fact that they lead by 102 with eight second innings wickets remaining means they begin day three in the ascendancy.

Quick Single: Injured Steyn out for the series

In an intriguingly oscillating encounter that both teams have done their darnedest to squander any hard-earned advantage, and which offers no certainty other than more uncertainty in its remaining days.

Particularly in light of the day-three forecast for Perth’s first burst of summer heat, with the predicted high of 37C expected to fast-track the widening of cracks that run disconcertingly the length of the WACA pitch.

And which is likely to make any target beyond 220 a challenge for the team batting last – a major challenge given the recent form of Australia, who find themselves in that position.

So fragile has Australia’s batting become they have reached 250 just once in their past seven Test innings, and even that first dig of 379 at Colombo in August wasn’t enough to prevent a thumping 163-run loss.

The concerns about that frailty were aired publicly by national selection panel chair Rod Marsh when unveiling the squad for these first two Commonwealth Bank Tests last week.

When he was lampooned in numerous quarters for pointing out that a key criterion in naming seamer Joe Mennie ahead of Jackson Bird was that the former boasted marginally superior batting credentials.

An assessment that makes perfect sense in the wake of yet another batting free-fall in which Australia shed 10-86 in less than 40 overs, their most abject all-of-innings surrender on home soil for almost six years.

And while that capitulation might have seemed unthinkable at 0-166 with South Africa’s strike bowler Dale Steyn out of the attack for both this Test and the rest of the series with a busted right shoulder, it was scarcely unforeseen given the Australians’ recent form.

Or lack thereof.

Their recent catalogue of batting inadequacies reads like the buy-in-bulk price details of clearance sale items in the post-Christmas junk mail – 10/203 and 10/161 at Pallekele; 10/106 and 7/123 at Galle; 9/112 and 10/83 at Colombo.

For a few hours on Thursday evening and the following morning, it appeared that brittleness had been left behind with the second of Sri Lanka’s dual annual monsoons.

As Warner and Marsh turned the 105 they piled on for the first wicket as South Africa floundered late on day one into 158 after an hour of day two.

Their team’s most substantial opening stand since Warner and the now deposed Joe Burns took 237 from the highly rated New Zealand attack in the opening Test of the previous summer.

But it blew back with a vengeance when Warner fell for 97 two balls after the day’s first drinks break, furious with himself for trying to steer a ball from Steyn rather than meet it with the full fury of that bludgeoning bat as he’d done to most of the 99 earlier deliveries he’d negotiated.

Thrashing 16 of them to the boundary and one beyond it.

Down a bowler and with an even skinnier serving of luck, the Proteas then willed themselves back into the game through the implementation of intuitive bowling plans, canny use of reverse swing and sheer bloody mindedness not to surrender hope.

Although the reverse swing bit didn’t come about without some rancour, mostly on the part of English umpire Nigel Llong who engaged in a lengthy chat with Proteas captain Faf du Plessis seemingly on his team’s habit of bouncing the ball in from the outfield.

A practice that is often a clumsy bid to mask attempts to scuff the ball’s exterior, thereby making it more prone to the elusive art of counter-intuitive swing.

The first suggestion movement might be a factor came when Kagiso Rabada bent one past Usman Khawaja’s belated and ungainly defensive prod and flattened his off stump.

The next indication that things were rolling quickly away from the Australians after such a dominant start arrived in the next over when Test debutant Keshav Maharaj earned himself a first Test wicket he’ll never forget.

In circumstances that many at the WACA and more watching on around the world – including Australia skipper Steve Smith who will forever be the left-arm spinner’s maiden victim – will be similarly unlikely to fathom.

In diplomatic parlance, it was a bold call from umpire Aleem Dar to raise his finger given Smith had advanced more than two metres down the pitch which – under more than 100 years of precedent – would have rendered him safe from the lbw law.

But which under new interpretations and a broadening of the 'target' zone under which the ball-tracking element of the DRS process operates makes batters fair game even if they are struck so far down the pitch they might claim to be stealing a single.

Smith’s incredulity at the decision, and then the failure of the review that he immediately demanded to reverse it, might see him in strife with the match referee at Test’s end.

Although if justifiable indignation is a defence allowed under the players’ Code of Behaviour then he may escape with nothing more punitive than referee Andy Pycroft’s sympathy.

Quick Single: Warne slams DRS after Smith's dismissal

However, the removal of Australia’s other best batter for a duck and the lift it gave the Proteas and their debutant spinner saw the game spin on its axis over the ensuing session.

Shaun Marsh’s stoic vigil ended on the stroke of lunch when Vernon Philander’s swing pinned him in front of his stumps, while the straight one angled into the younger Marsh a few overs later ensured that debate over his tenure will continue for at least another fortnight.

Given the squad for the next Test in Hobart is already picked, and Mitchell Marsh – who has been dismissed in single figures nine times in his past 14 Test matches – is in it.

He was but one of four duck scorers in Australia’s middle and lower-order as the dual mysteries of left-arm spin and accurate seam bowling saw the Australians at risk of being bowled out in arrears.

An outcome that bookmakers had clearly dismissed as laughable an hour or so earlier.

If not for Peter Nevill’s 23 (before he was fired amid doubt but was left with no available reviews to remedy the error) and Peter Siddle’s unbeaten 18, South Africa might have begun their second innings with a lead.

As it was, the deficit was two but the inadequacies of the Proteas’ top-order that were laid so devastatingly bare on the first morning have clearly not remedied in the 30 hours or so since.

Struggling opener Stephen Cook batted deeper into the innings than at any prior stage of this tour to date, although rifling a catch to mid-wicket in the 17th over having laboured more than an hour for 12 was hardly a pivotal shift in fortune.

And the fact that former skipper Hashim Amla endured his least productive Test match in a decade – his untidy drag-on to the stumps after making one barely bettering yesterday’s duck – means much hangs on the pair at the crease, patient opener Dean Elgar (46no) and JP Duminy (34no).

And the batters to follow, namely du Plessis, Temba Bavuma and first innings top scorer Quinton de Kock.

If any one of them remains at the crease come the final session tomorrow, then one of the modern game’s most unlikely Test turnarounds remains a very live option.

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