New-look Australia begin with victory

A Test series that has brought Australia humiliation and then retribution in quick succession ended with an emphatic win and the very real promise of brighter times ahead.

With more than half the starting XI jettisoned in the wake of the series-deciding loss to South Africa in Hobart less than a fortnight earlier, the new-look Australians completed a seven-wicket win just over halfway through day four of the final match.

The most convincing, all-round Test match performance since they thumped New Zealand 2-0 across the Tasman Sea last February, a series victory that lifted them to the top of the world Test rankings.

Five consecutive losses later, the national selectors (with the imprimatur of the nation’s cricket decision makers) summoned three uncapped players and a couple or recalled hands to stem the bleeding.

It was a win that didn’t arrive without a few of those blips expected of a team in transition.

David Warner’s needless run out when halfway to victory was the fourth such sacrifice of a top-order wicket in the space of three Tests.

Then Usman Khawaja’s second-ball duck that contrasted so sharply with his triumphant ton a day earlier meant much was piled on the broad shoulders of rookie opener Matthew Renshaw.

Who was a celebration of patience if not quite a carnival of stroke play in scoring 34 not out, during which he copped some slow hand-clapping as he staved off 32 consecutive deliveries without scoring amid the 122 dot balls he accumulated from 137 faced.

But the breakthrough win eventually arrived at 6.35pm, beyond the scheduled dinner break which was delayed with a result imminent, and just moments after captain Steve Smith was denied the chance to post the winning run having nicked off with a couple to get.

Image Id: EE1848FA3BF74879AC4E51FB386FAF09 Image Caption: South Africa savour their series triumph // Getty

Perhaps just as fittingly, new caps Renshaw and Peter Handscomb were in the middle when the latter hit the winning boundary although most of the on-field celebrating was done by the South Africans who shared hugs to acknowledge their decisive series win.

But by outplaying the previously rampant South Africa across all four days (and nights) of the pink ball Test, the Australians – and most notably their relieved skipper Smith – can look to next month’s three-Test Commonwealth Bank Series against Pakistan with confidence.

A commodity that was missing, feared lost, after the home team capitulated so meekly at Blundstone Arena and the Proteas rightly secured the series win they had subsequently hoped to extend to an unprecedented 3-0 whitewash.

But while that record remains intact, Faf du Plessis’s team board their return flight to Johannesburg on Tuesday with more than newly fashioned trophy cut from rose-coloured glass.

That being the pride of forcing their opponents to take stock and radically overhaul the way they play Test cricket and the personnel they employ to do so, such was the scale of South Africa’s dominance across the first two Tests.

The fact that it did not extend to a third match was more the result of disciplined bowling and dogged batting from an opponent that had been challenged to dig deep, rather than any complacent dwindling in effort from the visitors.

But as it turned out, the decisive moments of this Test probably arrived on the opening day when South Africa – in their first encounter with day-night Test cricket and the pink ball – were knocked over for 259 in less than 80 overs.

At the time, du Plessis acknowledged his team’s lack of direct experience with the game’s latest innovation meant he wasn’t sure how to properly evaluate his team’s first innings, speculating it might be worth closer to 350 given the historic difficulties of batting in the revised format.

The way the match unfolded, with batting not as problematic as most expected and a few feared, it was significantly below par and left the Proteas chasing the game from that point onwards.

The good fortune Australia hoped to have visited upon them early in the day arrived in circumstances more as a result of happenstance than meticulous planning.

Having started the day with Mitchell Starc, whose final spell of seven searching overs on Saturday evening did much secure Australia’s ascendancy, Smith’s hopes for another early strike were initially dashed.

So, with the second new ball due within the hour, Smith removed his strike bowler after a pair of wicketless overs (that yielded just four runs) and enlisted first-change seamer Jackson Bird in his place.

Bird had struggled to find his range in his early bowling efforts in the first innings, but with his first ball today landed bang on a length and got it to sneak past the inside edge of Quinton de Kock’s searching bat.

English umpire Nigel Llong was among the few at Adelaide Oval who didn’t immediately think South Africa’s danger man was out, but Smith’s insistence that a review be lodged – knowing the count would reset in seven overs – proved spot on.

As has been much of what the Australians have done throughout their most complete Test performance in almost a year.

To have de Kock, the most prolific batter of this three-Test series, back in the sheds before the new ball arrived, with the lead below 100 and with only a clutch of bowlers to follow meant it was Australia’s Test to lose.

With only opener Stephen Cook, the batting barnacle who had proved as obdurate in his final innings of the tour as he had been dispensable in those that came before, threatening to push the target towards the 180 or more the South Africans were eyeing.

But the hard newball on a fourth day pitch proved the master of the Proteas’ tailenders and – ultimately – Cook, although not before the opener reached his second Test century and first against Australia.

Which he reached against type, with a neatly struck pull shot to the boundary off Josh Hazlewood, the 235th delivery he had faced in an innings where he alone was able to find a way to reach 50.

Unfortunately for the visitors, either side of that hard-earned milestone the Australia quicks accounted for Vernon Philander following an optimistic review of a clear lbw, and Kagiso Rabada who was well plucked by Matthew Wade diving smartly to his right for a low leg-side snare.

That would have helped ease any angst Wade might have felt in the knowledge his rival, dumped Test keeper Peter Nevill, was 150-plus and flying in his return to Sheffield Shield cricket with New South Wales.

Cook’s eventual dismissal to the late-swinging yorker that would have seen him knocked over cheaply in the first innings had Starc not over-stepped meant Australia’s target was 127 with not a hint of bad weather on the horizon.

A chase that would have fallen comfortably into the ‘notional’ category had the Australians not been bowled out for less than that mark a couple of times during their recent fall from number one to fourth where they currently reside.

There was an attempt by some to invoke the ghost of 1994’s SCG Test where Australia famously imploded five runs short of their target of 116, when their nerve failed under the dual assault from South Africa’s Fanie de Villiers and Allan Donald.

But given that Warner, the oldest member of Australia’s current Test line-up, was preparing to begin Year 2 at Matraville Public School when that match was decided it was never going to be a talking point in the dressing room.

Where Australia’s first Test win in nine months was being loudly and lavishly celebrated as the sun set on cricket’s third day-night Test this evening.

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