Brilliant AB Finds Perfect Antidote

Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon analyse all things Australian cricket amidst a perfectly poised Test series in South Africa

- Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon

Geoff Lemon: One. All. The best Test series start with one-all, don’t they? A win apiece, each side showing what it can do, then showing what it can’t. Or doing both those things in the opposite order. That’s how the maths work out. After Durban, after Port Elizabeth, everyone is mad about one thing or another, and this is another highly feisty exhibition of Test cricket. And we’re celebrating it by sitting on a quiet beach halfway to Cape Town that I never quite caught the name of.

Adam Collins: It’s a much better way of enjoying the long wait than sitting in a hotel for days as the players are. They’ve missed a trick – this Garden Route is spectacular. In the old days they would have a tour game, these days it’s choosing a Netflix series to binge. We’re so lucky to have four Tests here rather than two or three. The pause helps the Australians more, for mine. Momentum and all that.

GL: But it also gives time to roll the dice on a reprieve for Kagiso Rabada. It’s such a frustrating situation: best fast bowler in the world, probably, who has just turned in a match winning performance, but concurrently gets himself suspended for boiling over during wicket celebrations. There’s not much point fighting ICC charges: players who go to a hearing routinely have the charge upheld, and appeals rarely work either. Maybe the South Africans are exhausting their options purely on principle, arguing that Rabada didn’t mean to clash shoulders with Steve Smith.