8-32 and all that: the stats analysis

5: Test defeats for Australia in succession, their worst run since 2013 and a sequence that sees Steve Smith join Michael Clarke and Kim Hughes as the only skippers to oversee such a dire run.

Quick Single: Ruthless Proteas hammer Australia

20-246: Australia's match total (85 and 161) is the second-lowest in 104 years when they've lost all 20 wickets. The only other occasion Australia failed to reach 250 across two innings in that time was on a minefield in Trinidad, when the tourists were bowled out for 128 and 105 by the West Indies as Steve Waugh cemented his legend by staring down Curtly Ambrose during a defiant 63 not out in the first innings.

3: Consecutive series wins for South Africa in Australia. Only England in the 1880s, and West Indies a century later, have managed that on Australian soil previously.

8-32: Australia's collapse on the morning of day four in Hobart. The spectacular folding of the innings made day one's 85, and the 10-86 lost in Perth, look positively resilient. Not since 1961, against England at Headingley, when they lost 8-21, have Australia lost wickets three through 10 for so few runs.  

2: Callum Ferguson's unfortunate batting average after a challenging first Test that saw him run-out for three from a direct hit in the first innings, and beaten by a Kagiso Rabada short ball for one in the second. The jury is out as to whether he'll have an opportunity to rectify it in the third Test on his home patch, the Adelaide Oval.

Quick Single: Blame players, not selectors says Ponting

558: Number of balls faced by Australia across the Hobart Test – the fewest in a home Test since 1928, a match which saw the debut of Sir Donald Bradman. No pressure then, Callum Ferguson!

3: Runs conceded by Vernon Philander in seven overs on the fourth morning, with five maidens. After taking 5-21 in the first innings, it was a shock to see his superb bowling effort go unrewarded in the wickets column second time around, though Kyle Abbott and Kagiso Rabada could scarcely have asked for a more effective foil.

5: Time out of his past six Test innings that Joe Burns has failed to score more than three. Since Sri Lanka, the Queenslander has posted scores of 3, 29, 0, 2, 1, 0 at 5.83.

9: Test innings for Adam Voges without passing 30. In that time he's score 101 runs at a tick over 11. At 37, his Test future will come under serious scrutiny ahead of Adelaide.

4: Matches out of the past five in which no Australian has registered a hundred. Shaun Marsh and Steve Smith both scored centuries in the final Test defeat in Sri Lanka, but it's been barren otherwise. Prior to the tour of Sri Lanka, Australians had scored 19 hundreds in their past eight Tests, one of which was almost entirely washed out.

41: Wickets for Kagiso Rabada at the 10-match mark, a figure that places him between the premier Proteas speedsters of their time, Allan Donald (46) and Dale Steyn (38). Donald was 27 years old after 10 matches, Steyn was 23. Rabada, somewhat frighteningly, is 21.

39: Runs contributed by batsmen 5-11 across Australia's two innings in Hobart. We'll repeat that one – 39 runs from 14 innings at the astonishing average of 2.79.

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