Josh Inglis and Alex Carey have spent this Test doing their talking in front of the stumps. By stumps on day two in Cape Town, the wicketkeeper-batters had dragged Australia from a wobbly 185 for four to 330 for four, a lead of one run over South Africa’s 329 with six wickets in hand and a partnership worth 145. Inglis, unbeaten on 85, and Carey, 51 not out, will resume on day three with the match, and perhaps the series, beginning to tilt Australia’s way.
The road there was anything but smooth. Twice on the second day South Africa landed double blows to derail promising Australian positions, and twice the Australians rebuilt. The day carried the same ups and downs as the first, if at a gentler pace, fitting for a ground set against its mountainous backdrop.
The morning had belonged, briefly, to Travis Head. While he was there, Australia’s first session threatened to echo South Africa’s dominance on day one, when Aiden Markram and Marques Ackerman had piled on 140 against a bewildered attack. Head threw his hands at anything wide, mixing luck with skill for seven boundaries. His new opening partner Matthew Renshaw offered a study in contrast, leaving and defending the new ball with the same clarity he had shown in the middle order in Durban. Renshaw, after all, was the original candidate to replace Jake Weatherald at the top before the selectors made their brief and ill-fated Nic Maddinson excursion.
Head made 41 of a 58-run stand, and his dismissal will keep the debate about his batting position alive. On the surface, an opener’s average of 49 looks titanic by modern standards. The detail is starker. That average splits into 23 in the first innings of a match, 43 in the second, 71 in the third and 60 in the fourth. Head dismantles teams late in games that have been set up to suit him, but he has not batted time when early conditions demand it. A stronger shield up top, freeing him to plunder in the middle order, may still be the wisest use of a precious resource.
His exit also fed a worrying pattern. Chopping on to his stumps, this time off an awkward cut at Simon Harmer’s off-spin, made it eight times bowled in his last 15 dismissals, up from 20 out of 66 before that span. Harmer struck again in the same over, teasing Marnus Labuschagne into a catch at slip. For Labuschagne, the duck itself matters less than how it came about. A player who has trained so hard to move dynamically against spin stood with both feet in cement, poking at a ball that would have sailed harmlessly past the stumps. In theory he has one more innings to save his Test career before the chance arrives to blood a replacement during the Australian summer. On this evidence, that was the shot of a man in no state to use it.
Cameron Green came in to rebuild, though South Africa were left fuming when the third umpire denied a catch off Gerald Coetzee’s bowling. Harmer, at second slip, was convinced, and the replays looked identical to precedents in which a fielder with fingers flat on the ground pops the ball up into his palms. This time it was not given. Australia added 85 before that stand ended, including a risky burst from Green, who hooked the returning Kagiso Rabada’s bouncer barrage for six, six and four in consecutive deliveries.
Meanwhile, Harmer’s frustrations mounted. He had Renshaw given not out to a beautiful ball that drifted across the left-hander, spun back past the edge and clipped the back pad, only for umpire’s call on height to save the batter. It was Marco Jansen who finally broke through, needing the third umpire to confirm that extra bounce had carried the top edge of Renshaw’s half-hearted uppercut. Then, in Jansen’s next over, Harmer at slip completed the Green catch that had earlier been whited out. Just before tea, Australia’s set pair were gone for 74 and 65, still 144 behind at 185 for four.
What followed was the Inglis and Carey partnership, built in contrasting styles. Inglis took the traditional counterpunching route of his kind, while Carey mixed defence with moments of creative scoring. Harmer was milked, Rabada stayed ineffective, and once Inglis passed fifty he opened out, hitting a six off both bowlers and cutting Coetzee for consecutive fours. There were scares, including a Harmer ball that spun back and nearly took Inglis’s off stump, and a couple of top edges that dropped safe, but Australia’s scoring kept the field spread. Unlike Mitchell Starc’s demolition derby with the new ball the previous evening, South Africa’s use of theirs only sped the runs up.
Captain Pat Cummins, unsure enough of his own batting to choose to bowl on day one, watched the new configuration come good. Now the question is whether day three brings a decisive Australian lead, or whether South Africa can haul them back.