For the second time in the course of an elongated weekend, Australia’s revamped ODI outfit has been humbled by South Africa who steamrolled to a 142-run win at The Wanderers Stadium.
The win, the second-highest in terms of runs that the Proteas have recorded over their fierce rivals in the 50-over format, comes in the wake of last Friday’s six-wicket drubbing with almost 15 overs to spare.
And which has the South Africans poised to topple the reigning world champions in the five match Momentum Cup series that concludes over the next 10 days with games in Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town.
Set an unprecedented run chase of 362 – Australia’s previous best to win was 334 in 2011 – the tourists’ top-order batting was once more as patchy as the badly scarred, gravel strewn Wanderers playing surface.
Where a recent corporate party staged by the venue’s private owners necessitated an urgent turf transplant and which, upon inspection by match officials pre-game, appeared so unsatisfactory there was consideration given to calling off the match before it began.
Which might have been a preferable outcome for the Australians given the manner in which it panned out across the subsequent hours when they again coughed up too many runs and scrounged just 219 of their own.
Having managed to capture just two South African wickets in the first 25 overs of their bowling innings, the Australians surrendered five of their own in the same time frame.
The last of those being David ‘Bull’ Warner who had emerged as his team’s sole hope of challenging the target at the ‘Bullring’ when he made it to 50.
But whose dismissal upon reaching the milestone left it for Travis Head (51) and Matthew Wade (33) to push deep into the final overs in the hope of launching one final, brave assault.
A challenge that never materialised as Australia was bowled out in the 38th over.
In opting to bowl upon finally calling correctly at a coin toss, captain Steve Smith effectively laid down a challenge to his batters to chase down whatever total the South Africans might manage to post.
With some onus on a bowling group even less experienced than the one fielded at Centurion last Friday to try and keep that around 300.
Below 350 at best.
The latter cohort looked to have rallied to the skipper’s call when Quinton de Kock – the man who had singlehandedly snatched the opening ODI on Friday night with a blistering 178 from 113 balls – fell in the 11th over.
For a comparatively soporific 22 from 24 deliveries faced, before his bid to clear the on-side infield presented Chris Tremain with his maiden catch in international company.
But if the Australians thought the early removal of de Kock along with the absence through injury of AB de Villiers and the omission of a well-again Hashim Amla – a decision that raised many eyebrows notwithstanding South Africa’s complex selection protocols – would pave a way through the Proteas batting they were sadly misled.
The home team’s innings was almost at its halfway point before another wicket fell, that of Amla’s stand-in as opener Rilee Rossouw who took on the role of de Kock in thumping 75 from 81 balls before holing out.
Having learned from the nightmarish Centurion experience, the Australia bowlers employed a greater variety of slower balls, cutters and reduced pace bouncers, but it was an errant throw from the in-field that looked to have landed the heaviest blow.
Faf du Plessis’s push and go to mid-off for his first run was collected by Aaron Finch who rifled a throw in the vicinity of the bowler’s end stumps to which the South Africa skipper was stretching to reach.
With the ball homing on his rib cage, du Plessis instinctively raised his left hand rather like a traffic cop trying to bring a speeding bus to heel, and copped it flush on the fleshy part of the palm below his thumb.
The 32-year-old immediately collapsed to the ground, cradling his violently shaking left paw in his right arm like it had sustained a compound fracture and was forced to receive medical treatment for several minutes.
Had he spent that time planning his vengeance it’s doubtful he could have imagined a more complete riposte, powering his way to his sixth one-day international century (half of which have been scored against Australia) and piling an even greater hurt on the touring bowlers in the process.
Unlike the corresponding ODI between the teams a decade ago that yielded 26 sixes across the two innings, the approach employed by du Plessis and his equally productive batting partner JP Duminy (82 from 52 balls) was far more measured.
Punching the ball through gaps in the field rather than trying to muscle it beyond the rope to rattle up 150 for the third wicket, until the arrival of the final 10 overs demanded an acceleration at the expense of prudence.
But by the time du Plessis fell for 111 from 93 balls, swatting across the line at Mitchell Marsh to deliver a line drive to Smith on the mid-wicket rope, Australia were already staring at uncharted run-chase territory.
As it turned out, the Proteas might have felt cheated that they managed just 53 more from the 28 balls that followed wicket given the hitting power of David Miller, Wayne Parnell and rookie all-rounder Andile Phehlukwayo.
However, in a world without the aberrant ‘434 Game’ between the same two teams at the very same venue 10 years earlier their 50-over total of 6-361 would have seemed a fairly safe bet.
Verging on gilt-edged when Finch lost control of an attempted pull shot in the second over and Smith fell – to his undisguised annoyance – to a too-fine leg glance and a stunning one-handed pouch from de Kock in the seventh.
Both of those wickets – we as well as the scalp of Mitchell Marsh that left Australia tottering at 4-87 an hour into their pursuit – vindicated the Proteas’ pace bowling plan of relentlessly targeting the visiting batters’ rib cages and hip bones.
Providing them no width to free their arms, no scope to manufacture stroke and no respite from the repeated attack on their persons.
In addition, the South Africa quicks Dale Steyn, Kagiso Rabada and Wayne Parnell appeared noticeably quicker than their opposing seamers, gained greater zip from a pitch that seemed moribund in the morning session and even some movement in the dry, thin Highveld air.
In getting the coin toss right, it seemed Smith had judged the track wrong in believing it would become easier and easier to bat upon as the sun beat down the smoke wafted ever thicker from braai chefs on the terraces.
Either that, or there was a marked discrepancy in the skills the South Africa bowlers brought to their task and their capacity to execute them in comparison to Australia’s largely greenhorn complement.
Unfortunately for Joe Mennie, record books that show his 0-82 as the most expensive, least successful spell by an Australia bowler in his ODI debut won’t be accompanied by an asterisk that explains ‘belting batting pitch, rubbish outfield, inexperienced bowling mates’.
And notwithstanding Tremain’s maiden wicket in his ninth over and an accomplished effort to concede ‘only’ 13 runs when called on to bowl the final over – including a brave and successful slower ball on the last delivery – his 1-78 puts him just behind Mennie in the above category.
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