Aussies on the charge in gripping finish to day four

On a pitch that was supposed to support spin bowling, it was Australia's two-pronged pace attack that prised open South Africa's fragile batting in an exhilarating final session and set up Australia for an unlikely push for outright victory and a series clean-sweep in a rain-ruined Test match.

After Sydney's gloomy summer saw another three hours robbed from a game that had previously lost almost 140 overs to rain and bad light, Australia skipper Pat Cummins abandoned plans to bat briefly today and instead took aim with the ball.

The result was another masterclass of fast bowling against an already beleaguered opponent with Cummins (3-29) and Josh Hazlewood (2-29) scything through the Proteas top-order to have them 6-149 with a minimum 98 overs to be bowled on day five tomorrow.

That leaves them 326 runs adrift of Australia's first innings with their best batters already back in the sheds.

Should the final four wickets fall with the total below 276, it seems almost certain Australia would defy recent history and enforce the follow-on to try and force a remarkable outright result given the amount of time lost to weather and associated contingencies.

While the sun shone briefly this afternoon, a return to heavy cloud brought a suitable sense of foreboding to a dramatic final hour as Cummins and Hazlewood unleashed hostile spells of brutal fast bowling while Nathan Lyon looked likely to take a wicket almost every ball with his off-spin.

Proteas bowling allrounder Marco Jansen copped the brunt of the pace pair's fury, wearing a couple of stinging blows on the upper arm as Cummins targeted Jansen's 207cm frame with a series of bouncers delivered from around the wicket for maximum discomfort.

To Jansen's credit, he survived where his more credentialled top-order teammates had failed but faces another stern challenge tomorrow if his team are to defy momentum and their recent history of batting fragility to save the match.

Having entered the series as the lone South Africa batter with significant Test experience, captain Dean Elgar continued a forgettable campaign when he found himself in a tangle fending a Hazlewood bouncer from around the wicket that yielded a catch behind off his glove.

The 35-year-old, playing his 82nd Test which is only one fewer than the combined aggregate of his fellow top-six teammates, needs at least 19 should the Proteas bat again in this match to avoid his lowest average in a Test series since making his debut in 2012.

So far in this campaign he's scored 46 runs from five knocks at an average of 9.2, with his previous low watermark being the 10.75 he averaged in the two-Test series against Sri Lanka in South Africa four years ago.

That median would have been even skinnier had the reflex grab claimed by Steve Smith at second slip when Elgar was on six been given the all-clear by an exhaustive video review.

Instead, third umpire Richard Kettleborough decreed that - as remarkable as Smith's effort was to pluck the ball in his outstretched fingertips as it flew past his right foot – it had touched the ground as the fielder clutched it between his thumb and forefinger.

To have ruled otherwise would also have meant a moral injustice for the visitors who were convinced they had Marnus Labuschagne's wicket in similar circumstances on day one, only to be denied by the absence of definitive video evidence.

Batting had blatantly become a far trickier proposition on the SCG pitch then when last attempted on Thursday evening, and it was scarcely surprising the Proteas soon embarked on another of their familiar top-order implosions.

Opener Sarel Erwee had seen off the pace of Hazlewood and Cummins only to be undone by a bit of magic from Lyon, who pushed through a faster, shorter ball the left-hander chose to let go only for it to continue on with the bowler's arm and graze off-stump.

Since scoring a century in his second Test appearance at Christchurch last February, Erwee has managed just one half-century in 15 innings through which he's averaged 21.3.

With both openers sent back inside 18 overs, pressure fell upon keeper-batter Heinrich Klaasen whose only previous Test appearance came in 2019 and was recalled for this game to occupy the unfamiliar role of number three.

The Proteas have deployed three different players in that pivotal role across this series, with Rassie van der Dussen (0 and 5 at Brisbane) and Theunis de Bruyn (12 and 28 at Melbourne before returning home for family reasons) both failing to provide stern resistance.

Klaasen's cameo was similarly short-lived, caught behind for two when Cummins fired a ball at his left hip that the batter tried to fend away only to have it brush his glove.

But he might have been sent back for a duck eight overs earlier after a strident shout for lbw off Hazlewood was denied by umpire Richard Gaffaney and, when reviewed by Cummins, third umpire Kettleborough could not definitively rule if ball had contacted bat as well as pad.

There was no such doubt in Temba Bavuma's dismissal half an hour after tea, when he nicked off to a Hazlewood delivery that had shown first traces of the reverse swing both teams expected to become a factor in this match given the dry, abrasive pitch surface.

Like his top-order teammates, Bavuma was afforded a life when – on 16 – he thrust his pad forward at Lyon from where the ball ballooned upwards and brushed his glove before rebounding towards silly point, where Travis Head was too intent on appealing for lbw than completing the catch.

But despite the brief interludes of belligerence of Bavuma and Khaya Zondo, who each bludgeoned a couple of sixes – all off Lyon – South Africa were powerless to curtail the procession of wickets.

Zondo fell to the ageless two-card trick when Cummins, operating over the wicket and targeting the rough outside right-hander's leg stump from where the ball would bounce unpredictably, followed a soaring high bouncer with a searing low yorker.

When the ball thudded into Zondo's back leg in front of middle and leg stumps, it took umpire Gaffaney no time to confirm the raucous appeal but the batter chose to review and seemed genuinely bemused when replays confirmed what the naked eye already knew.

With the floodlights blazing and the action-starved crowd of 19,134 baying, Cummins then unleashed his full fury at Jansen and then Verreynne who had already enjoyed a fortuitous stay at the wicket.

Having narrowly survived being run out on 0 when Ashton Agar's throw missed the stumps by a whisker, and dropped by the same fielder on 10 when a miscued pull almost stuck in Agar's outstretched left hand, Verreynne rode his luck to the end.

A scorching Cummins short ball fired into his rib cage was fended agonisingly shy of waiting catchers on the off-side before the Australia captain's decision to change attack to over the wicket proved masterful when South Africa's best-performed batter of the series edged to slip.

That left the Proteas in familiar strife at 6-137 with only allrounder Jansen and a troupe of under-performing tailenders to try and guide their team to stumps and the prospect of salvaging a draw tomorrow.

The bad news for the tourists is, for the first time in the new-year Test, no rain is forecast for the day ahead.

 

When play eventually resumed at 1.45pm this afternoon, the delay for rain that had begun at the final drinks break on Thursday evening had stretched to 44 hours and 49 minutes with 170 overs lost.

That break might have been curtailed sooner but for the discovery of sodden turf on the pitch's edge at the Paddington end of the SCG, where water had seeped precisely at the point fast bowlers would launch into their delivery stride.

As sun finally peeped through cloud that blanketed the city for three days, ground staff undertook urgent repairs that required blocks of turf being cut from the muddied area and replaced by drier bricks hewn from the outfield.

These new sections were then hammered into place and packed in absorbent sawdust, and faced an immediate test from Australia's pace men including skipper Pat Cummins who had announced his intention to declare at the day two total of 4-475.

It meant Usman Khawaja was robbed of the chance to post his maiden Test double-century, stranded on 195 not out.

The only other Test batters to be denied a double-ton due to declarations by their captains are West Indies legend Frank Worrell (197 against England at Barbados in 1960) and India batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar (194 against Pakistan at Multan in 2004).

But with a mandated minimum of 157 overs remaining in the Test, the luxury of allowing Khawaja even just a handful of deliveries to reach the milestone with a further 10 minutes then lost to change of innings, it was gift considered too extravagant.

The decision to bowl at first opportunity appeared shrewd when the second delivery of South Africa's pursuit – sent down by Hazlewood who took the new ball – lifted from a length and took the shoulder of Elgar's bat and flew wide of Khawaja at third slip for a streaky boundary.

It was immediately obvious the Proteas would need to produce a batting effort of rare courage and skill to negotiate the day's remaining three hours without significant damage.

It then soon became just as clear the visitors were not up to that task in the face of remorseless Australian bowling and fielding.

Men's NRMA Insurance Test Series v South Africa

First Test: Australia won by six wickets

Second Test: Australia won by an innings and 182 runs

Jan 4-8: Third Test, SCG, 10.30am AEDT

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Ashton Agar, Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Lance Morris, Nathan Lyon, Matthew Renshaw, Steve Smith, David Warner

South Africa squad: Dean Elgar (c), Temba Bavuma, Gerald Coetzee, Theunis de Bruyn, Sarel Eree, Simon Harmer, Marco Jansen, Keshav Maharaj, Heinrich Klaasen, Lungi Ngidi, Anrich Nortje, Kagiso Rabada, Rassie van der Dussen, Kyle Verreynne, Lizaad Williams, Khaya Zondo

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