Lyon pounces to put Australia in control

Australia’s hopes that a reshuffled team brings a reversal in Test fortunes will be effectively decided in the opening session of day four at Adelaide Oval where the final Test against South Africa rests on a knife edge.

The return of Nathan Lyon as a spin bowling force and a pair of typically timely strikes by Mitchell Starc reduced South Africa to 6-194 at stumps.

A lead of 70 runs and the responsibility of pushing that past 150 – which will give the visitors’ seamers more than a notional target at which to bowl – resting squarely on not out opener Stephen Cook and South Africa’s best performed batter of the series to date, Quinton de Kock.

Under the glare of the floodlights that have overtaken pitch and overhead conditions as the premier intangible in this intriguing Test, Australia’s revitalised bowling attack landed a series of crucial blows in a gripping final session.

The first came under the mauve glow of twilight, when Lyon enjoyed the rare recent thrill of a top-order wicket and the far less frequent sight of a stump being knocked clean out of the ground.

When he executed the perfect one-two combination on JP Duminy by spinning one delivery narrowly past the left-hander’s wicket and then following up with a ball that went on with the arm and speared through Duminy’s ungainly shot.

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But the heavier hit came less than an hour later, under artificial light, when the Proteas’ first-innings century-maker Faf du Plessis had stroked his way 12 with ominous fluency and Steve Smith summoned his strike bowler Starc.

The fact that du Plessis had been booed on to the field in spite of – or perhaps because of – calls for greater civility from the Adelaide crowd suggested that the notoriously defiant skipper might once more make a point.

So the Australians were understandably jubilant when Starc – with the first ball of his spell’s second over – induced a loose drive that was snared brilliantly by card-carrying wicketkeeper Peter Handscomb sans gloves at gully.

When Temba Bavuma lobbed a catch from an attempted sweep off an ebullient Lyon with a handful of overs left before stumps, the visitors were effectively 5-66 in their second innings.

Nightwatchman Kyle Abbott was another telling blow in a dramatic final over, by which stage the only South Africa batsmen who stood between the Australians and an all-out push for victory was Cook (81 not out from 183 balls faced), whose unconvincing technique had made him the player least likely to stick around in challenging conditions, and the dangerous de Kock.

The 32-year-old opener had produced the sort of innings Usman Khawaja compiled for Australia – minus the grace and flare – to withstand the pink ball and the high-lux lights to post his highest Test score since he ground out a century on debut against England last January.

Australia had begun day three eyeing a minimal first innings lead of 120, with 150 or beyond the ideal destination.

That buoyancy was based ostensibly on the presence of Khawaja, who had batted duration of day two and was expected to get a bulk of those surplus runs if he was able to hang about with the bowlers.

So when Khawaja was the first wicket to fall, pinned to his stumps by the naggingly pinpoint Vernon Philander in the day’s seventh over, the hopes of extending that advantage much beyond the existing 68 seemed slim.

The lack of faith in Australia’s recently unproductive tailenders was betrayed by Khawaja’s almost apologetic call to review his lbw decision.

Even though it had struck him flush on the knee roll, no further forward than the crease line and dead in front of middle stump and was so palpably out that Khawaja left the field on first viewing of the video evidence without needing confirmation of the verdict.

But the generous applause that coincided with the confirmation of umpire Nigel Llong’s initial call was a deserved recognition of the left-hander’s foremost Test innings rather than polite appreciation of the Decision Review System.

Khawaja had batted more than seven-and-a-half hours, seen off all that South Africa’s previously rampant attack could hurl at him (as well as six of his own batters) and had posted the highest pink ball Test score in Australia.

And if South Africa thought his eventual departure would bring about the sort of lower-order capitulation that has been a hallmark of the Australians’ past five Test losses, then they had misjudged the new-look home team.

Mitchell Starc found the batting form that had eluded him since the end of Australia’s unsuccessful Ashes tour of 2015, and which had previously carried him within a single of a Test century two years earlier.

His 53 from 91 balls included several striking examples of his trademark big hitting – most notably the swing over the leg side that was cleanly caught in the sixth row of seats beyond the midwicket fence – but was more meritorious for its studied defence.

After Australia’s bowlers were criticised for too freely giving away their wickets at the end of their team’s paltry first innings at Hobart while captain Steve Smith stood unbeaten and unsmiling at the non-striker’s end.

Starc fashioned a valuable 30-run stand with Josh Hazlewood before bunting a tame return catch, and then Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon and Jackson Bird – who equalled his best Test score to partially answer critics of his batting acumen – pushed the lead to 124.

Which must have appeared decidedly more to South Africa when Dean Elgar, the in-form portion of a perpetually misfiring opening combination, was smartly scooped in the slips for a duck in Starc’s first over.

But to the escalating frustration of the Australians who had the under-performing partner Stephen Cook out cheaply in the first innings only to see him reprieved through a no-ball, the unfashionable right-hander became an even more stubborn fixture in the second.

Cook has shown throughout his six Test appearances to date that he is blessed with a limited range of stroke and uses them with a prudence bordering on parsimony, and he was at his non-explosive best as South Africa slowly hauled in their deficit.

Cook dropped anchor, scoring just 43 in the session between the end of Australia’s innings and the sounding of the dinner bell, but more significantly Australia dropped the only gilt-edged chance that came their way in that time.

A languid slash from Hashim Amla who had become similarly becalmed but more as a consequence from a lean tour that had yielded barely 50 runs from four completed innings before today, that flew fast to the right of recalled keeper Matthew Wade.

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Except that Wade didn’t make any movement in that direction, figuring it was rifling from Starc’s left hand towards rookie Matthew Renshaw at slip.

To Amla’s fortune and disbelief, Renshaw was of the view that Wade would be veering in front of him at any second until there was less than a split thereof in which he could thrust out his left paw and deflect the ball behind him for two runs.

It was a miss that led to endless debate and commentary as to whose catch it rightfully was, but also one that woke Amla from his torpor.

As if the man of quiet, devout faith had received a missive from above that luck was with him and it was now time to ride it in his last innings of the tour.

He launched into Lyon, belting the off-spinner over mid-on for four and over his head for six from consecutive deliveries and looked likely to post his maiden 50 of an otherwise barren Test series.

But on 45 he was again unpicked by Hazlewood, who has claimed the former South Africa captain’s wicket in all five times at bat in this campaign.

In near identical fashion to most of those earlier successes, luring Amla into a stroke only for the ball to catch the thinnest of edges.

So thin that Wade did not have to worry about moving, and that Amla himself immediately called for the decision to be reviewed in the belief he had failed to land bat on ball.

Only for the all seeing eye of the DRS to prove him wrong.