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27th over: South Africa 66-4: Bavuma 17, Bedingham 17 Starc going the short ball now, but Bedingham takes a run off his hip, and Bavuma hooks another. Then a lovely on drive from Bedingham! Places the full ball wide of mid on, and it zooms up the felt and into the corner pocket. Starc’s bouncer reply is wildly high, no need for evasive action.
26th over: South Africa 59-4: Bavuma 15, Bedingham 12 Another couple, this time to Bedingham, who punches Hazlewood off the back foot into the cover gap, returns for two, then works a single to deep midwicket. Deep midwicket? Yes, there’s a fielder there, and one at long leg. Hook shot plan? Cummins brings that man up now, for Bavuma, and moves Green to cover, then out of there into a second gully. Bavuma uses that gap for a single.
“I loved the snakes and ladders analogy,” writes Rowan Sweeney, “but the entitlement of Cricket’s Mayfair and Park Lane wanting to crush the life out of the best thing to happen to Test cricket in the last decade (other than Mitchell Santner) makes me think of another board game, notorious for how boring it is...”
Quite. Get Jay Shah a monocle.
25th over: South Africa 55-4: Bavuma 14, Bedingham 9 Aaaand smoked! Bavuma finally lays into one, after a very cautious innings yesterday. Through the covers for four. Then tucks up and drops a run to mid off, sprints and yells “Yep, yep, yep!” Positive batting. The team 50 comes up. Bedingham perplexingly reaches for a wide ball, looking to squeeze it into the turf, when he didn’t need to play, but gets a run from the next ball, tapped to mid off. Labuschagne there is the fielder they’re milking runs to: he’s a fierce pick-up-and-throw merchant if they get a call wrong. Round the wicket goes Starc, left arm, and Bavuma smokes him for four more! Through point this time, lofted but there’s a deep backward point, so no danger. And it beats that man on his square side. Ten from the over.
24th over: South Africa 45-4: Bavuma 5, Bedingham 8 Hazlewood now, from the Paviliion End, getting the ball to jag down the hill and tenderise Bedingham’s thigh pad. Nasty. Two slips, plus the extra lanky figure of Webster at gully, watching Hazlewood zip the ball past the outside edge.
23rd over: South Africa 45-4: Bavuma 5, Bedingham 8 Dangerous start from Starc! The ball swinging away from Bavuma, beats the outside edge of the right-hander’s bat as he drives. Pace, probing around the off stump some more, but the last ball of the over Bavuma gets a shot away, driven straight for two.
Spare a thought for our colleague Daniel Gallan, of South Africa but now living in England, who was quite the shade of bilious green yesterday as Australia’s score mounted towards 200, which faded into a pinker hue of resignation as the South African wickets began to fall. He needs something that team today, if nobody else.
As we forecast, kind of, heavy cloud cover has moved over Lord’s towards the start of play.
After which, Andy Bull took that analysis a step further, looking at the feting and lionising of the ICC chairman and de facto BCCI boss, who was treated to some high-level fawning on the opening day.
I’ve been interested lately in the place of the WTC, and of the final, in terms of how it’s perceived in the two major cricket powers who didn’t qualify for this match, and want to reshape the fixture’s immediate future on their own terms.
Three seats down, Simon Burnton knew from the opening burst that he wanted to write about Kagiso Rabada, who passed Allan Donald on the South African top wicket-takers list yesterday while bagging five.
Want a match report? Why not start with a match report. With my own two eyes, I saw Ali Martin hew this from the stone of words with his own two hands.
Preamble
Geoff Lemon
Hello from London. The day dawns sunny here, though who knows which way it will turn – Lord’s atmospherics are often a game of snakes and ladders. So too can be Test cricket, as South Africa found yesterday: racing up the ladder of the Australian top order, sliding back thanks to Steve Smith, ascending again to bowl them out for 212, then having a serious slip of four wickets before stumps.
They didn’t fall all the way back to the bottom, but they will if David Bedingham and the captain Temba Bavuma go quickly this morning. Rung by rung it will need to be for the South Africans, at 43 for 4.
