‘Wanted to give our fast bowlers a rest’ – Keshav Maharaj
Australia were bowled out for 221 in response to South Africa’s 488 in the fourth and final Test of the series in Johannesburg, but Faf du Plessis opted to rest his bowlers at the end of 70 overs of work and resisted the temptation to ask Australia to follow on.
“It’s been a long season and we wanted to give our fast bowlers a rest, plus we think batting will be a lot harder in the fourth innings because the pitch will hopefully deteriorate more,” Keshav Maharaj, who returned 3/92, said after the third day’s play, which ended with South Africa on 134/3 in the second innings, 401 in front. “We also weren’t sure about Morne Morkel (suffering from a side strain) bowling because he’s a big impact bowler for us and we hope he’ll be ready to bowl tomorrow.”
Maharaj bowled the most number of overs in the Australian innings – 20 – and explained the plan afterwards: “We’re going to try and dry up the runs because that normally brings wickets and although there will be a lot of focus on spin, it’s about us bowling well collectively as a team, whether the wickets come at my end or the other end, building pressure is what Test cricket is about. We have good plans set up.”
For Australia, it could have been a lot worse as they look to square the series. When Tim Paine walked out at No.7, the scoreboard read 96/5, and then 96/6 almost immediately after. But Paine and Pat Cummins added 99 runs to shore up the innings, both batsmen scoring half-centuries in the process.
“We were very disappointed with yesterday, just purely on effort and our mode of dismissals we thought was pretty poor. We spoke about that last night, but also about the opportunity you always get in cricket, there's a second innings and another day. Dust ourselves off from yesterday, come back today and try to do as best we can,” said Paine, the new Australia captain.
“I thought we stuck out the day really well. Now we've got to let today go and focus on tomorrow to try and do things better again. Keep on improving, that's sort of where we're at, at the moment, when you've got some of your best players not in the side, it's just about people picking up the slack and trying to get better every day.”
Paine scored 62, the top score of the innings, while Cummins hit 50. Paine, interestingly, was batting with a cracked right thumb, having suffered a hairline fracture on the second morning when keeping up to Chadd Sayers.
“I haven't spoken about it, all we know at the moment is some sort of break in it. It's all in place, which is good. Barring another hit in this Test it should be OK. It's got a little crack in it. I've played through worse,” he said.
Cummins, who has been one of the stars for Australia on a tour where not much has gone right for them, did his reputation more good by getting among the runs. He has 20 wickets in the series, and the 50 – his first half-century in Tests – showed he could hold his own with the bat too.
“We all know how good Pat is as an all-round cricketer – I think this tour he's been superb,” said Paine. “He was fantastic in the Ashes as well. The pleasing thing for Pat is that he's starting to get some real consistent cricket into him and he's playing a lot of cricket, bowling a lot of overs and he's getting through it. I think the confidence he's getting out of that is holding him in really good stead going forward.”