Rivals set for fiery Test showdown

For so many years the Australian international cricket summer have pounded out a familiar, almost pre-ordained rhythm.

Touring teams arrive primed and ready for a Test campaign, are ground into the dust or the grass or the drop-in or whatever the individual Australian Test venues dish up, and head home having barely raised a yelp.

The most recent roll call of the vanquished reads West Indies (2-0), New Zealand (2-0), India (2-0), England (5-0) and Sri Lanka (2-0).

Indeed, the only team to boast black ink or the Test ledger in Australia over the past decade is the one that begins a three-match campaign against the notorious home-track bullies at the WACA Ground in Perth tomorrow.

And South Africa enter this Commonwealth Bank series justifiably wielding greater confidence and self-belief than most of those who have come before them because not a single member of their 16-man touring party have been part of a losing Test assignment on Australian soil.

A collective record that every rival Test nation must find utterly unthinkable.

To compound that ebullience, they remain the only team to have won consecutive Tests at the WACA since the legendary West Indian outfits of the early 1990s.

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And they find themselves pitted against a foe coming off a couple of comprehensive drubbings, an unforeseen 0-3 whitewash from their most recent Test outing in Sri Lanka and then an equally unprecedented 0-5 ODI thumping at the hands of the euphoric Proteas in South Africa just weeks ago.

So if South Africa’s stand-in skipper Faf du Plessis was the sort of bloke who indulged in hubris on the basis of historic precedent (both recent and not) he’d have been chortling from the rafters during his pre-Test media conference at the WACA today.

The fact that he was cautious, diplomatic and respectful was evidence in itself as to why this South African team, that like its rival has shed a host of veteran players and slid down the Test rankings ladder of late, just might be capable of pulling off the unthinkable.

That is, to become only the second outfit in more than a century - after the once mighty Caribbean kings – to win three consecutive Test series in Australia.

What du Plessis identifies as the single significant obstacle between his quietly confident young team and that unlikely honour is the self-same one that has stopped pretty much every visiting mob in its tracks in recent years.

The fact that Australia is a vastly more formidable opponent on home turf than it is on the road, even in those days when they’re pretty good in away matches.

And it’s a truism that the South Africa captain intimately understands because he experienced that phenomenon of familiarity after the Proteas were humbled 3-0 in India last year at which point they were labelled a Test team in terminal decline.

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“I think they (Australia) will take comfort from the fact they’re playing in home conditions,” du Plessis said as he recalled a Proteas group that found itself in transition after the retirement of legends the likes of Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis.

“If I can speak from our point of view, I can remember when we went to India and we were a little bit scarred after that series and we went back to South Africa, we took comfort in our home conditions (to tackle and defeat New Zealand last year).

“It did play a role with some of the guys who were still a bit out of form so that might be the case for some of them (the Australians), it might not be the case.

“But they’ll definitely take confidence in the fact that it’s their home conditions they can look forward to.”

It’s the same rationale that du Plessis’s captaincy rival Steve Smith nominated as the key element to turning around a rare lapse in form that has seen Australia tumble from the top to third on the Test ladder in less than a year.

With du Plessis forecasting that India will retain their hold on the number one honour for “at least the next year” because of the raft of Tests they are scheduled to play at home – including a four-match series against the Australians early in 2017.

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"Traditionally we have played well at home, and it’s about us knowing what we do well here, we have scored big first innings runs and that is going to be crucial for us this year again,” Smith said today.

“And bowling aggressively to the tail, not being afraid to get it up there and intimidate them a little bit and to the top order consistently bowl good areas and challenge them on wickets that traditionally bounce a bit more than they are used to.

"Obviously we haven't come off the back of much great cricket, South Africa was disappointing and Sri Lanka was as well.

“But that's gone, we've left that behind and we are focusing on what we have can control now and that is this summer.”

Integral to that plan is left-arm quick Mitchell Starc, Australia’s fast bowler and without whom the team’s fortunes in Sri Lanka would have been even more dire.

Starc will be backed up by seam trio Josh Hazlewood, Peter Siddle and Mitchell Marsh who are all experienced, reliable and steady in Test company but who – to invoke the serpentine analogy so beloved over past days – lack Starc’s quick-kill venom.

As such, du Plessis has nominated his fellow batters’ capacity to withstand the short, sharp spells that Smith has foreshadowed Starc will bowl in his comeback from a serious leg gash as being decisive in the final outcome.

“If we’re going to win this series it’s going to be how well we play him (Starc), du Plessis said today.

“He’s a wicket-taker, so he needs to come on and get wickets and we as a team understand that and need to just get through that.”

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While the South Africans are yet to finalise their playing XI, it seems likely they will include bean-pole quick Morne Morkel ahead of Kyle Abbott in a four-man pace battery after du Plessis declared Morkel free of his recent back troubles and available for selection.

Notwithstanding the respective employment of fast bowler fire power, this certainly looms as a more cordial series than the most recent between these most competitive rivals.

Which ended in a heated, at times ugly street fight in Cape Town in 2014 where du Plessis was hounded with dog calls by the Australia fielders, and the last-day tension saw a handful of players including Dale Steyn and Australia’s then captain Michael Clarke land a volley of angry verbal blows.

There was genuine camaraderie between Smith and du Plessis as they posed with the newly struck series trophy at the WACA today, with Smith quizzing his counterpart on the secrets of his whiter-than-white playing uniform and the pair exchanging a prolonged hug prior to returning their respective preparations.

Despite noting that the lead-up to the opening Test had been a bit “busy” with some of the reptilian repartee exchanged, du Plessis is genuinely of the belief that Australia under Smith will be less abrasive than previous incarnations of their southern hemisphere rivals.

“The teams I’ve played against in the past, Australia are probably the most verbal team in the world but that doesn’t mean it’s bad or good,” du Plessis said.

“It’s just their style of play and I think personality does determine how you play in that sort of space.

“So the kind of personalities we have in our team now, we’ll just focus on the cricket and hopefully that takes care of itself.

“And the personalities that Australia have now, and the leadership of Steven Smith is similar to ours, respecting the opposition and making sure cricket does the talking.

“If it goes away from that, I don’t know how that’s going to affect the series but that’s certainly not the style of play or the personalities that I think we have in the teams.”

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For his part, Smith finds himself having to tread a careful path between remaining true to his character and also acknowledging voices such as former captain Steve Waugh who have claimed the current Australia team lacks the intimidatory on-field presence of many successful ones in the past.

As such, he invokes a non-verbal rallying cry for a team that is by nature more reserved and less overtly confrontational than its immediate predecessors to “puff out their chests” in order to boss their opponents.

“I’ve actually come out and said that myself,” Smith said when asked how he responded to the observations of Waugh and others.

“I guess that’s what I’m after from the team, and it’s not necessarily about sledging or anything like that.

“It’s about making sure that each individual can get the best out of themselves and have a presence about them.

“Everyone does it differently, for someone it might be about getting into a verbal contest with a bowler to get themselves going.

“For me I don’t like to say a great deal it’s more about making sure that my body language is right and I’m puffing my chest out and looking like I’m out there and I own the place.

“That (verbal intimidation) is not my cup of tea, it’s just about making sure my body language is right and looking like I’m on top of them.

“I’ve been working on that.”

Australia XI: David Warner, Shaun Marsh, Usman Khawaja, Steve Smith (c), Adam Voges, Mitchell Marsh, Peter Nevill, Mitchell Starc, Peter Siddle, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood, Joe Mennie (12th man).

Possible South Africa XI: Dean Elgar, Stephen Cook, Hashim Amla, Faf du Plessis (c), JP Duminy, Temba Bavuma, Quinton de Kock, Vernon Philander, Kagiso Rabada, Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Kyle Abbott (possible 12^th man).

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