At a little before 1pm on a Saturday afternoon in London, a group of Australian cricketers stood around blinking in the sunlight, looking confused, like they had just popped up from a green tube in an unexpectedly bright part of the Koopa Kingdom. Less than a day earlier they had been right on top, happily on their way to a second consecutiveWorld Test Championshiptitle. In less than three sessions of stubbornness and brilliance, South Africa had taken that away.
Sport is about creating an arena for the unexpected and some get hung up on the idea that acknowledging differences between participants is a form of disrespect. But the resource disparity should have made this contest one-sided. It was a triumph over politics and economics as much as over a rival group of players.
In Australia, Test cricket’s popularity brings about broadcast deals and ticket sales worth dozens of times the revenue their opponent brings in and underpins regular five-match outings against the heavy hitters of India and England. In South Africa, administrators have spent the past few years consciously shoving Tests to the margins, abandoning genuine series in favour of two-match coincidences, scheduling those as rarely as possible, and to all appearances quietly hoping for the format’s early death so that they can stop bothering with it. An equation of small crowds at long matches versus lucrative ones for three hours means the problem is self-evident, but there is no appetite to influence that rather than accepting it as immutable.
So for Australia, this was almost a formality in a long few years of achievement. From late 2021, there was a home Ashes victory, the first trip to Pakistan in decades for a series win, a creditable comeback in India after being belted in two matches, theirfirst World Test Championshipjust before their one-day World Cup,bringing the Ashes homefrom England, then a hefty home win to end India’s recent Australian success.
Soon comes the next home Ashes, then taking stock of which players might try to push on to another England trip and the World Cup in 2027 and which might call it a day. This WTC was another box to tick on the way through.
That they have bungled it will make this game more desirable in retrospect, for the public and the players. People who would have greeted a win with a shrug will be incensed by the loss. But when you do not achieve what you comfortably should, examination follows. Australia went in with a discombobulated top order, picking players out of position, after a couple of years of shifting and shuffling more than Shivnarine Chanderpaul.
It s important to acknowledge that picking a team for a one-off match is a lottery. All batters fail several times for each success, so with two innings available, you could select the most in-form player in the world and be rewarded with a pair. Success needs someone to buck the statistical likelihood, as Aiden Markram did with the innings of his life. Nor is it an acid-soaked delusion to ask the player batting three to open or the player at four to move to three. But equally, it is not perverse to question whether a cascade of unconventional choices might have influenced underperformance.
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For Australia, that started with picking Sam Konstas in Australia but not being willing to pick him afterwards. Thinking that it was too outlandish here meant Marnus Labuschagne was moved up and Cameron Green went into that vacated spot. Green had only recently gone from six to four and batting three against a moving ball was evidently too much.
Only 22 teams have won a Test in which their first drop batted twice and made as few as four runs. Labuschagne was not the worst, batting an hour and a half in each innings, but his two dismissals chasing width opened up paths for South Africa. Usman Khawaja made his career-best score recently in Sri Lanka against spin, but has noticeably struggled against pace for the past year or more.
With those three scoring 49 between them and a double failure from Travis Head, Australia did not have enough runs by the time the pitch flattened out on day three, needing another hundred to defend. South Africa played the chase to perfection, dynamic early and calm late.
The bowling quartet of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon is prolific, with Hazlewood soon to join the others in excess of 300 wickets, but they are not invincible in batting conditions. This is their 33rd Test together, miles more than any other quartet, but nine of those Tests have been lost.
The setup’s willingness to back its core players can be a strength, but when it fails like this, it can suggest cockiness. The batting order jumble may only be solved short-term against West Indies by Steve Smith’s finger injury, allowing Green to resume at four and Labuschagne at three, freeing Konstas to open. By the time Smith returns, Labuschagne should either have found runs or found the bench and Green should either be an all-rounder again or making way for someone who is. It will not solve the week just gone, though, when Australia got a little too clever and South Africa outdid them by simply playing smart.