Posted by It feels like South Africa threw the World Test Championship Final away more times than Australia. It’s just that when Australia threw it away, they did so decisively.
To recap all the throws, South Africa, in their position as underdogs, very definitely threw the match away in their first innings when they got bowled out for 138. That 74-run first innings deficit felt terminal right up until the fourth innings.
Australia made a half-hearted attempt to throw the game away in their second innings, falling to 73-7 but South Africa one-downed them by allowing that to become 207 all out.
That really felt like it should have been the end of the matter, but then Australia entirely misplaced their ability to take wickets.
What next for Australia?
Most match previews had Australia’s attack down as the stronger because Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon have all been around since the time of the Spanish Armada.
That makes them feel like proven performers, but nothing is a line, as Logan Roy says. “Everything, everywhere is always moving, forever. Get used to it.”
We remember Jason Gillespie arriving in England in 2005 as one of Australia’s greatest fast bowlers. Only he wasn’t fast any more. And he wasn’t great any more. Things swiftly started to unravel for him, like a hard-spun bog roll.
These things don’t generally occur in what Boris Becker once called “the blinking of one eye”. Except as a result of injury, fast bowlers don’t suddenly shed a yard of pace. It’s more that they don’t hit quite the same peaks and when they do it’s perhaps not quite for so long. Coming back from a layoff, it can also take that little bit longer to return to even those lesser, briefer physical highs.
Experience can mask a lot of this. Smart owd bowlers will often outperform their younger selves. Compounding that, in this instance, the Kookaburra gained a prouder seam and extra lacquer in 2021 and has been a lot more bowler-friendly ever since. Starc, Cummins and Hazlewood have performed well with it – but what changes has that extra assistance been concealing? We’re not convinced all of them are bowling quite as they were a few years back.
Starc is still getting it through. Cummins was as good as ever in the first innings, but some of his second innings bouncers were a bit fast-medium. Bowlers get tired – that’s the game – but perhaps he’s a little less freakishly superhuman these days.
To our eyes, Hazlewood was the least impressive. He went into this Test with 57 wickets at 19.68 since coming back into the team in the 2023 Ashes. The accuracy’s obvious and intimidating, but his pace seems to have ebbed a fair bit. At times he was dangerously close to being a purveyor of 124km/h nude nuts.
Maybe one-off Tests are no place to gauge such things. Or maybe they throw them into sharper focus.
As for the batting, if your all-rounder can’t bowl, he doesn’t magically become a number three and if your number three has been woefully out of form, that probably won’t be remedied by asking him to open.
What next for South Africa?
Not a lot really. There’s a couple of Tests in Zimbawe very soon and a couple in India in November, but then nothing for their entire home summer.
Having completed the game, they’re now going to play a different one.
Nepal v Netherlands. Match tied. First super over tied. Second super over tied.
Looks like they’re going to need….