This is some of the best test fast bowling I've seen. Abbott and Rabada are absolutely on fire. Relentless pressure.

it was definitely dsciplined bowling but Aussies fought pretty well and both wickets we lost were bad luck more than anything

We did very well to survive that only two down. SA were beating the bat 2-3 times an over through some parts of that session. 

Begs the question - where was that fight in the first innings?

Like I said the other day it didn't matter who South Africa picked (Abbott or Morkel) they've got the best group of quicks going around at the moment. 

This is why I'm quick to jump on talk that our bowlers are doing a great job or that someone like Starc is the best in the world, as clearly from what we've seen from South Africa they are on another couple of levels on both as a team and an individual level. 

Australia did well to be only 2-121 at stumps. 


From viewing live, Smith's footwork looked good quickly after he arrived at the crease. Kawaja seemed to play and miss a lot, but played some cracking shots late in the day.

The South African bowling looked very accurate. I wasn't quite behind the wicket, so I'm not sure if it was conventional swing, seam or reverse swing that the South Africans bowled.

Hazelwood looked to be in very good rhythm live, whereas Starc didn't. Hazelwood was the second fastest bowler in the game at 145 kph, behind Starc at 147kph. Mennie looks to be no more than a Shield plodder. It would make a huge difference if Pattinson and Cummins were match fit.


For anyone who only watches cricket, or sport in general exclusively on TV, it is so much better live if one has a seat with a reasonable view.

interesting to read this.

 Live at the venue, I knew the pressure was great and the Aussies had to battle to survive.

Got to the game at 11.40am looking forward to a day's cricket, only to find Australia 8 for 151!

Australia lost 8-41 in less than a full session - all out for 161, following a first innings of 85!

Australia lost this Test match in almost only 2 days of cricket.

its shocking

improving the selection would help a little


But there is a real problem with our development

Neroli Matthews from Fox Sports just tweeted this:

"I asked Smith what he needs as skipper... he says he needs some players who are willing to fight & show some pride in the baggy green."

Ouch. 

I feel that the Australian cricket team is in the same place the Socceroos were when Holger resigned. We were too reliant on older, complacent, underperforming players, and were playing without pride or mongrel. Postecoglou brought through the next generation of players before they were really ready - it was very painful at first, but in the medium term we ended up winning a huge piece of silverware. 

One policy that needs to die quickly is picking batsmen over the age of 32 to make their debut. If it works, we get maybe 3-4 useful years out of them. If they fail after one series, that's wasted time we could have spent giving a younger player an opportunity. 

We've tried this "pick an older batsman policy" for about 8 years, and so far the only success stories are Michael Hussey (who debuted at 30 and should have been picked earlier) and Chris Rogers (who was great but only for 25 tests). In the same time we've had Shaun Marsh, Callum Ferguson and Voges, all of whom have been failures to various degrees. We also hung on to Watson and Haddin for too long. We even had Joe Burns come in and score two hundreds, before he had two bad games in Sri Lanka and the selectors went back to Shaun Marsh. What the fuck?

We have paid the penalty for not picking young batsmen. If you look at the top batsmen in the world right now - Kohli, Williamson, Root and Smith, they all got picked in the test squad before the age of 25 - in some cases as young as 21. Clarke got picked really young, got dropped, then fixed up his game and came back the best batsman in the world. So did Smith. And Khawaja. Kane Williamson averaged under 35 for the first two years, but they stuck with him and now he's the finest batsman New Zealand have produced since Martin Crowe. 

How good would Bancroft, Burns, Handscombe, Jake Lehmann or countless others be now if they'd been given more of an opportunity earlier? If they fail, so be it. But at least they'll learn something from the experience of failing, and they'll still have time to go back to Shield cricket and fix it. As much as I ragged on Mitchell Marsh, at least the selectors gave him a chance to fail. 

When the Pakistan series comes around I'd like to see the selectors drop Voges, Ferguson, Nevill, Siddle, and maybe Mennie, and pick some really young guys to replace them. 

yes its been baffling that we pick such old batters to debut while being impatient with young batters with solid first class averages. It often takes 20 test matches to climatize. So many world class or even good players have an average of 30 after 10 tests. But by the time an aging batsmen climatizes their career is over apart from the occasional quick adapter

Yep agree with that. I watched a video the other day of VVS Laxman's first test hundred in Sydney - after 20 tests he only had an average of 20 or so. They stuck with the selection and look how good he turned out.