Key events

Lunch - South Africa 202 for 5, lead by 102 in the third innings

They’re still in it. An even session, only 62 runs added, but it would have been huge for SA had Breetzke still been there. Still, they’ve got their lead past 100, and if they can double that then they’ll be a real show to win this Test. A partnership between these two, some big swings from Big Marco, and that 200 lead could be theirs.

The knife-edge waltz continues!

75th over: South Africa 202-5 (Rickelton 39, Mulder 5) Starc for a second over, annoyed with an extra walk-back and run-up as Mulder pulls out. And if he was annoyed the first time, imagine the second time. Consecutive balls. Starc can’t blame the batter too much though, because the second time was about the towel falling out of the bowler’s waistband. Nasty bouncer, once he’s finally allowed to bowl. Mulder glides the next away, wants a single but Rickelton ignores him, and Mulder isn’t impressed. Might be in the hangry zone with lunch looming. So is Starc, who gets stuck into Mulder about running on the pitch. It’s a preoccupation of Starc’s in recent times, with a few batters, he gets stroppy about that.

It doesn’t get him a wicket though. One no-ball in the over, and that is that.

74th over: South Africa 201-5 (Rickelton 39, Mulder 5) Australia think they have Rickelton’s wicket! Absolutely convinced. But they’re wrong. Renshaw is the bowler, spinner. There’s a huge puff of dust from the ball pitching outside the off stump, and that dust is stirred up again as the toe of the bat clips the ground, I think, or just whooshes through that dust cloud. The ball ends up at slip, but the deflection was not from the outside edge of the bat. Big Rick survives. Big Ren bowls a maiden.

73rd over: South Africa 201-5 (Rickelton 39, Mulder 5) Starc back for Cummins, which is interesting, as he’ll be the new-ball operator, surely. Maybe just two overs here, for something different, then a quick break? Rickelton flashes him away to deep third. Mulder drives at him and nearly edges. That’s the left-arm angle to a right-hander.

72nd over: South Africa 200-5 (Rickelton 38, Mulder 5) They’re a hundred to the good! A single from Lyon completes that. An appeal against Mulder as he pads the ball away, but manages to keep the gloves clear.

71st over: South Africa 199-5 (Rickelton 37, Mulder 5) Rickelton is playing Cummins to the leg side really well, the bowler over the wicket to the lefty, and a bit too full, allowing the batter to go back down the ground again.

70th over: South Africa 194-5 (Rickelton 32, Mulder 5) Lyon is ragging it. Every time he hits that rough patch outside off stump, it turns big. Back in and nearly bowls Mulder, hits Carey again and bounces away, Mulder had no idea where that ball was going. Threatening for South Africa now, but it increases the urgency with which the Australians need to get through this innings. Harmer will have plenty to work with in defending a target. The lead is 94.

69th over: South Africa 194-5 (Rickelton 32, Mulder 5) Comical misfield from Green, as Rickelton punches through point. He’s chasing, he slides, and then the slide just stops. Holds up in the grass. He throws out one huge arm to try to grab the ball just inside the rope, but his fingertips can’t drag it in. Cummins concedes four.

68th over: South Africa 189-5 (Rickelton 28, Mulder 4) Four catchers around the bat for Mulder, though he turns things over well enough. Rickelton ups the ante to end the over, a full ball at leg stump that he drives very nicely, straight, just to the on side of straight, for four.

67th over: South Africa 182-5 (Rickelton 24, Mulder 1) New man Wiaan Mulder is off the mark in quick time, pushing to midwicket.

WICKET! Breetzke c Starc b Cummins 43, South Africa 181-5

Matthew Breetzke, what have you done? Straight to your room without dinner. That is… so predictable. So easy. So unnecessary. Cummins with an old ball, he will eventually go short, and it seems that Breetzke is waiting for that. Because on this pitch with the old ball, it doesn’t get up that high. He’s waiting for the pull shot but only takes it from about waist height, can’t get power on it, can’t get elevation on it, can’t keep it down either. Hits it off his hip in the air, a nice flat curve to long leg, where Starc takes the catch. After 372 balls without one, Cummins finally takes a wicket. That will have given his career strike rate a beating.

66th over: South Africa 181-4 (Breetzke 43, Rickelton 24) There he goes! Breetzke plays the shot that Bavuma played last night, except that he hits it. The result is four to the midwicket boundary, a standing slog sweep across the line. Then a single to raise the fifty stand. They’re batted really well, done some hard work, and have room to make the most of that for a while until the second new ball creates new challenges. Almost a strange dismissal for Rickelton though! Pads the ball away from outside leg, but holds his bat up at shoulder height, and the ball comes up and hits that bat. Luckily for him the rebound drops safely towards point, not to a fielder.

65th over: South Africa 176-4 (Breetzke 39, Rickelton 24) Cummins to the right-hander. Two slips, quite staggered. And finally the scoring dam lets through a little water. Overpitched a touch, and Breetzke drives through extra cover for four. Drives again, straighter now, so Cummins gets fingertips to it and deflects it to mid off, no run.

64th over: South Africa 171-4 (Breetzke 34, Rickelton 24) Lyon now over the wicket to Rickelton, who is kicking away everything he can that pitches outside his leg stump, as a left-hander. The grind continues.

63rd over: South Africa 171-4 (Breetzke 34, Rickelton 24) Pat Cummins to give things a go after the break, and his surprise ball is that he doesn’t bowl a bouncer. Not one. Not in a whole over. Is he feeling alright? He’s enduring his longest wicketless stretch in his career, since last taking one in Durban, though he bowled excellently yesterday.

62nd over: South Africa 171-4 (Breetzke 34, Rickelton 24) Edged and hits the keeper! Not a chance, really, hits Carey on the pad too low to catch, off the inside edge as Breetzke comes forward. The ricochet doesn’t go to hand, even with all those catchers grouped around. A drinks break arrives, for all to recompose themselves.

61st over: South Africa 170-4 (Breetzke 33, Rickelton 24) I lied about the quicks bowling half these overs, because Cooper Connolly will bowl at least one of them. Might only be one, as he starts with a drag-down that Breetzke cuts through cover for four. Connolly is a left-arm ortho with a first-class bowling record that barely exists, yet is discussed in Test terms as an all-rounder. One of life’s great mysteries. Five singles later, and his over has gone for nine.

60th over: South Africa 161-4 (Breetzke 26, Rickelton 22) Not an easy over for Rickelton to face, a maiden from Lyon. Edges one ball into his leg, misses another while stepping across and trying to whip to the leg side, hopping about on one leg and nearly falling over trying to keep it out of his pads.

59th over: South Africa 161-4 (Breetzke 26, Rickelton 22) Another tidy over from Hazlewood, not creating any threat though as yet. Goes the short ball a couple of times, that is probably method number one for the Australian quicks right now, with 21 overs to go until the new ball. Lyon will bowl half of those, so it’s up to the fast men to find some way of applying pressure with the rest.

58th over: South Africa 159-4 (Breetzke 25, Rickelton 21) Huge shout for Lyon against Breetzke, hit him outside the line but he had his bat tucked behind pad. Not sure if the umpire said he was playing a shot or no. Australia only have one review left, so they don’t chance it on whether that Lyon ball was turning back enough. I say no, at a glance.

57th over: South Africa 158-4 (Breetzke 24, Rickelton 21) I’m really enjoying seeing the South Africans fight out some good overs, and leave scoring to later. Hazlewood to Rickelton, had his number in Durban when Rickelton was opening, but he’s now the keeper in the middle order, and he’s determined not to make a mistake. Defends the entire over with laser focus.

56th over: South Africa 158-4 (Breetzke 24, Rickelton 21) Lyon with four fielders in a star formation around the right-handed Breetzke, and you sense that Lyon is where the persistent menace will be. Big turn, and a few little yelps and murmurs from the fielders as Breetzke isn’t far from popping one up.

55th over: South Africa 157-4 (Breetzke 24, Rickelton 20) Hazlewood on for a jam roll. Rickelton doesn’t play him badly, tries to go as gently at the ball as possible, so when an edge is found, it rolls away for a couple of runs. The South African have been good this morning, haven’t tried to force the pace like their top order did yesterday to the team’s detriment.

54th over: South Africa 154-4 (Breetzke 24, Rickelton 17) The left-hander keeps chopping Lyon behind point, a run there, then Breetzke plays tip-and-run to mid on. Umpire Illingworth scolds him for running down the middle of the pitch, but it was a tight one, he might have been out had be detoured to the side. Not that you’re allowed to traipse up and down the centre of the strip all day, even with that excuse. You get leeway on one of those, then probably a warning on the next.

Match calculations here are easy: South Africa’s lead is their score minus 100. They lead by 54.

53rd over: South Africa 151-4 (Breetzke 23, Rickelton 15) Starc goes around the wicket to Breetzke, and is going at him. The batter is getting drawn into the conflict, a bit of lip flying back and forth. Starc is bowling rapidly, and that angle into the right hander can be difficult. Breetzke negotiates the over, defending and ducking where he can, but Starc looks dangerous. No runs.

52nd over: South Africa 151-4 (Breetzke 23, Rickelton 15) There they go! Rickelton gets a ball from Lyon that is not exactly short, but the batter gets back and leans away to make the length and the width he wants, cuts behind point for four. One good partnership and this could very much be South Africa’s day.

“Morning Geoff. Fire up the CRUCIAL FIRST SESSION machine, this really will decide the match. I’m wondering, do you think South Africa missed a trick with only one frontline spinner here? Given the turn and it only getting more exaggerated through the game, Lyon is backed up by Connolly and Renshaw? Coetzee hasn’t really fired - yet - so you wonder what Maharaj could’ve done here...”

Morning, Guy Hornsby. I think they got burned by two spinners at Durban and were never going to return to it here. But with enough runs, Harmer should be able to do most of the job alone, and Markram can support if necessary.

51st over: South Africa 147-4 (Breetzke 23, Rickelton 11) Starc off his long, long run, turning on the advertising cloths that are pegged to the turf. Length ball, bouncer, then Rickelton gets a thick outside edge to deep point and is able to take a run. Breetzke carries on defending from the crease, then hops about, thinks about picking up the ball. Don’t do it, Matthew. There’s a fair bit of chat going on out there too, Starc with that broad smile he uses when he’s needling somebody. He’s quite an innocuous chat merchant usually, doesn’t have that particular dog in him.

50th over: South Africa 146-4 (Breetzke 23, Rickelton 10) Breetzke has to dive into his ground going through for a single, after getting in a tangle with Lyon as the batter set off from the non-striker’s end. That could have been an interesting one, had the throw hit the stumps. Probably home. Rickelton gets that run, Breetzke adds a couple more, but the top-edged sweep is not a sustainable method against this bowler.

49th over: South Africa 143-4 (Breetzke 21, Rickelton 9) Lyon and Starc will be the opening combo. Starc took 6-72 in the first innings, and has 2-29 so far this time around. He only had a couple of 10-wicket matches in a long career until recently, then added two more within the past 12 months. Another one is in the frame if he’s good enough.

Breetzke scrambles a semblance of a shot against a short ball, deflecting a single from a tangle of gloves. Rickelton plays with more elan, steering to backward point in the deep.

48th over: South Africa 141-4 (Breetzke 20, Rickelton 8) It will be Nathan Lyon to start things off, from the end where he knocked over Bavuma in the second-last over last night. Early single to Breetzke, and Lyon comes around the wicket to the left-handed Rickelton, with three catchers on the off side! You don’t often see that. Two slips and a silly mid-off. Defensively played.

This is juicy, this is tasty, and this is coming out of the oven morning-hot and fresh to your table. Let’s eat.

As ever, send me an email if you want to chat, or muse, or opine, or scold me that I don’t understand the true nuances of cricket.

The forecast is clear and sunny all day, at least the part of it that is relevant to cricket. Some clouds coming in tonight, but that’s it.

And what of yesterday? It was another belter, shifting back and forth, but so much rests on South Africa’s captain, and while he was there, the hosts were in the best spot. Until the very late hour, the day’s final passage of play… here’s the match report.

If Temba Bavuma was decisive for South Africa as he batted through day after day in Gqeberha, his fall in the shadow of stumps on the third day might prove as decisive at Cape Town. Bowled by a Nathan Lyon classic with eight balls to go, he saw his team reach stumps at 140 for 4, with a lead of just 40 to build on.

Preamble

Hello, sport fiends. It is your season. Once again, as has been our good fortune through this Test match, we approach a new day of it with intrigue in the air and with any option possible. South Africa will resume their third innings four wickets down with a lead of just 40. In the next session, so much will be decided. Wickets, and Australia press home their advantage and set themselves up for a manageable chase. But it won’t take too many runs to become a big problem for the visitors. Another hundred and the game is alive, and two hundred and the game is snarling and destroying its cage.

Because it ain’t the easiest to bat out there, the pitch is wearing and offering more turn to the spinners, while still some lift for the quicks, even though batters can still play shots on it with true bounce. It might be a surface that rewards judicious aggression today, and South Africa have Breetzke, Rickleton, Mulder, Jansen, and Harmer to come, who can all meet that brief.

The whole series is genuinely in the balance as of ball one.