Australia’s batting crisis, laid bare in Gqeberha

Has Steve Smith played a more injudicious shot as a Test batter? Chances are that he probably has. It is a long career after all. And we’re talking about a Test where he brought up his 11,000th run for good measure.

But it’s unlikely that he’s played one that felt so out of character. It was an attempt to hoick a length delivery from Kagiso Rabada that pitched on around fifth stump before seaming away somewhere towards deep backward square leg. Only for him to sky a catch up to a fumbling Matthew Breetzke at mid-wicket. While Temba Bavuma held his breath and looked away because he couldn’t bear to see Breetzke’s effort, tens of thousands of Australians looked on in utter disbelief at what the best batter in their team had just done.

It was only the third over with the second new ball. Travis Head’s brilliant century knock had ended less than 8 overs prior to Smith losing the plot. And Australia still had the best of a session and a bit to bat out to save the second Test. Yet, Smith chose to play an even lower percentage shot than what Marnus Labuschagne had perished to the previous evening after getting his umpteenth score in the thirties. It didn’t make much sense in terms of its chances of success. It didn’t make much sense in terms of the match situation. And it surely didn’t make much sense in terms of what had already played out in a largely forgettable Test for Australia at St George’s Park.

In many ways, the Smith dismissal on Thursday afternoon felt like the perfect culmination of a two-day batting fiasco for this Australian Test team. Either side of a hearty and wholesome partnership between Head and the forever-reliable Scott Boland. A two-day expose of a team that has battled a litany of batting frailties for a while now. And has so often relied on an individual piece of brilliance—Matt Renshaw’s heroics in Durban being the latest—or a bunch of scratchy rearguards to bail them out. Or even make them look better than they are.

There was awe, but there was no shock. It was one of the worst collective batting displays by an Australian Test team this century. But it was one that felt like it had been coming for a while. Australia’s 99 all out in the first innings in Gqeberha was a day of reckoning for a batting line-up that had tiptoed around the precipice for far too long without being able to find a solid platform to jump onto.

What transpired during the 42.3 overs on the fourth morning though had the makings of a perfect storm. There was a charged-up South African attack led by Kagiso Rabada’s fieriness and Marco Jansen’s menace. A surface that despite being largely unthreatening still held enough in it for a highly-skilled attack like South Africa’s pace force. And a batting line-up that felt under siege against this relentless assault. It didn’t help that their most important batter struggled for most part of it with a bothersome neck issue.

As a result, the implosion happened so quickly that there was if anything not enough time to identify the specific fault lines. Unlike in the second go around, where they became very obvious and very stark.

There’s been enough scrutiny around a couple of those from the fourth evening, led by Labuschagne’s unbelievable keenness to hit Simon Harmer over mid-on despite the fact that he was trying to clear a gale that was so strong that it was blowing away life size speakers and other solid paraphernalia around the ground. Unfortunately for the long-term No 3, it brought to the fore the lengthy run of stops and starts that his career has endured since the heady days of his run as No 1 Test batter in the world. Along with the added frustration around the selectors’ stubbornness, according to those asking for his head, in not taking a strong stance against his lack of Test centuries since the middle of 2023.

The same level of spotlight then got shone on Beau Webster and his diminishing returns in the last few Tests after he played all around a regulation off-break from Harmer. And with Matt Renshaw coming and going in between those two wickets, outcomes that can be attributed to Labuschagne’s massively untimely brainfade, Australia’s batting liabilities were being highlighted brighter than ever. Not to forget Nic Maddinson’s sorry attempt at trying to survive Rabada in his first spell which inevitably ended up in vain.

So, when Smith decided to shake off his restless energy, which had seen him survive a dropped catch from Ryan Rickelton and change his bat immediately, with the most ungainly displays of audacity, the writing was very much on the wall. The confidence around this Test batting line-up as a whole had officially tipped over the precipice.