Key events
44th over: South Africa 97-5 (Bavuma 41, Mulder 2) It will be Boland to start the day, with the sun shining and the greenness having gone out of the grass. He spoke yesterday about not wanting to give players an easy leave early in their innings, but Bavuma is able to leave three of six balls to start the day.
First email of the day from Kenrick Riley.
“Dear Geoff, thanks for the link to that doco. What a ride you two’ve had! [That was yesterday, see the post here.] Anyway, I stupidly bet my mate that Boland would take 7-27 in the first innings. Mind you, at 4-31, if he got a hat trick now, I’d be only four runs off my prediction! Thanks for the blog.”
That was a bold prediction, given it would be in the top 25 Australian innings analyses ever, but sometimes one has to be bold. Seven wickets is still well and truly on. In theory, equalling Laker’s 19 is still on.
Scott Boland with 4 for 31 has been the story of the first two days, and he’ll have plenty of opportunity for a five-wicket bag in his first foray to South Africa as a cricketer. He’s now played in his fifth country, as well as England, India, West Indies, and at home.
There’s a line I’ve been seeing more often in the last couple of days saying, oh, well, he only has such good stats because he gets picked in favourable conditions. Which is the kind of thing someone would say who doesn’t watch the cricket or remember much. This is Boland’s 20th Test, and only three out of 20 have been played as part of four fast bowlers. And only three out of those 20 have been unsuccessful with the ball (Nagpur, Edgbaston, Leeds). So he’s played in a wide range of conditions, usually as a replacement for part of the Big Three rather than a complement to them, and has succeeded far more often than most bowlers in history.
You can email me anytime during the day – an OBO tradition. Thoughts, prayers, threats, curses, incantations.
Another point of interest is how Josh Hazlewood pulls up today, after being off the field crook yesterday. He and umpire Chris Gaffaney. Did they have a quiet dinner at an unvetted seafood joint?
Preamble
Geoff Lemon
You heard right. Cricket, like love, never runs on time. Or at least if often runs late. But today, at least, it’s running early. We’ll get that early start (by 15 minutes? What’s that going to get us, two overs?) and if the skies stay clear we can play late like we did yesterday. It won’t necessarily make up overs, in terms of the 450 scheduled for the match, given how slowly modern teams bowl their overs, but it will make up a few of the overs lost to rain the last two days. And every over we get back gets us closer to a result.
As to which way that result goes, Australia are in the better spot, but there’s so much riding on this current partnership and on Temba Bavuma specifically. We saw in Durban how lower order batting can define a match, and South Africa still have the opportunity to define this one. Bavuma has a great record as captain, though he’s often the supporting player – today he needs to be at the forefront, and get some help from Mulder, Jansen, and Harmer, primarily.
Can he get through the early burst from the Australians and build his way into the day? It all rides on that.
After a couple of days filled with rain interruptions that have only allowed a total of 43 overs, the skies have cleared and the sun is shining in Gqeberha with the mercury expected to hit 20C. Play will resume 15 minutes earlier than originally planned with first ball now at 9.45am local/6.45pm AEDT/8.45am BST and South Africa back at the crease.
Geoff Lemon will be with us shortly for a proper introduction, but for now catch up on his report from day two.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Scott Boland had to wait a long time. Scott Boland took a wicket as soon as he got a chance. It was the same story on day two of the second Test at Gqeberha as it had been on day one, with rain delaying play, this time until deep into the afternoon. When a wet outfield had finally dried enough to allow play to resume in African sunshine, South Africa lost three more wickets to finish on 97 for 5.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2026/oct/20/south-africa-v-australia-second-test-day-three-cricket-st-georges-park-gqeberha-live-updates
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