As a fractured news environment demonstrates, observations can be made from just about any perspective. One view of Australia’s Test team could focus on age, with the principal bowlers all having more than 33 years to their names. Another could focus on them all having more than 300 wickets.
The first Test in Durban this week sees the continuation of an unprecedented achievement by Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon, one that that they began in Mackay two months ago: being the only quartet in history to walk on to Test fields as members of the 300 club. By the end of day three they had taken another nine, South Africa bowled out for 284, trailing by 139 runs by the time bad light stopped play with Australia 33 without loss.
Beyond individual feats, those players are defined by the work they have done together: 38 Tests and counting as a group blitzes the previous record, however you define frontline bowlers. So it went through the first session of the third day. Hazlewood had already taken out Ryan Rickelton with a trademark dismissal the previous evening, but the morning looked set to be South Africa’s. A nice breeze, a snoozing surface, and a bushel of boundaries for Aiden Markram and David Bedingham, the latter taking three in a row from Starc.
But Starc was the one to flip the story, the left-armer around the wicket to draw Markram’s edge from a big drive on 37, the ball lifting to cause the error. Temba Bavuma followed cheaply, caught at slip reverse-sweeping Lyon, then Bedingham went for 49, Cummins now the bowler getting lift to tease another nick. The scorecard reflected team effort: Cummins one for 18, Lyon one for 14, Starc one for 37, Hazlewood one for 35.
That was the 31st over, before Wiaan Mulder bedded in with Tristan Stubbs. The match looked to be drifting by the 46th, as Australia turned to Travis Head, and Mulder immediately belted the part-time spinner for six and four. But at the other end was Cummins playing the middle-overs enforcer, as he so often does, finding a way when batting difficulty softens with the ball.
The breakthrough bouncer was the wrong line, outside off-stump, but the length and the sense of threat initially made Mulder shape to play. The pace and sharpness of bounce meant his attempt to bail out was too late, frozen in the first half of his shot when the ball lobbed up for a catch. In Cummins’ next over, the bouncer ploy snared Stubbs, mindlessly hooking to fine leg. A 55-run stand had fizzled out with both participants gone in the 30s.
The story of Australia’s four bowlers is also a story of Steve Smith’s catching. This innings took him back to the top of the Test catching list, in the game of statistical nip and tuck that he will continue to have with Joe Root for as long as they both play. Of Smith’s 223 catches so far, 150 have come from the current bowling quartet. His first three on this day were spectacular.
The Bedingham dismissal saw him dive across from second slip, instinctively poaching a ball heading to first. When Bavuma shaped for the reverse hit, Smith had the fleetness of thought and foot to sidestep a couple of metres, putting himself in the path of a ball that would have flown by. At six down, Kyle Verreyne hit the same shot more sweetly, but Smith moved early again, this time putting himself in range for a full dive to his right and a one-hander. It was beyond the norm, Smith’s victory lap showing that even he rated the effort among his best.
Marco Jansen’s free swinging was fun but futile, his 26 from 20 balls far less useful for his team than Lyon’s 27 from 91 the day before, leaving South Africa 197 for eight after Jansen bashed Hazlewood to mid-off. The last three did emulate their Australian counterparts for a time, Simon Harmer adding 52 with Keshav Maharaj and 35 with Anrich Nortje, but Maharaj was caught at cover off Starc after tea, and Smith finally got a straightforward slip catch from Nortje.
All out 284, trailing by 106, with only Beau Webster’s burgling of the No 11 to ruin the share of wickets, Australia’s big four ended with three for Cummins and two each for Starc, Lyon, and Hazlewood, taking their collective 1,641 wickets before this match to a round 1650. That number could only get so high because the age of the players is high enough to allow it. While their quality remains, the positive perspective wins out.
