A lively WACA surface made for an intriguing contest, with Australia setting the tone for the summer with an overpowering first-up performance
Daniel Brettig in Perth03-Nov-20165:04
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After last year’s unsatisfying fare, day one at the WACA was the cricket equivalent of a big juicy steak – or for vegans, an especially succulent mushroom. The ball flew off Matthew Page’s pitch with bounce and pace, batsmen were startled onto the back foot where often they press forward, and a healthy crowd of 12,382 ooh’d and ahh’d in obvious enjoyment.Australia, in search of a win to set the tone for the summer, were delighted by the carry for Mitchell Starc in the very first over of the morning. Peter Nevill was taking the ball up around shoulder height, and Stephen Cook fell off the fourth ball when he was unable to ride the bounce, like so many visiting batsmen of yore.Mitchell Marsh flew through the air at gully for the catch, and in an instant, numerous years of beige cricket on this ground were cancelled out. Memories harked instantly back to Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, Malcolm Marshall and Curtly Ambrose. Had he seen bounce like that last year, Mitchell Johnson might still be playing now.It was all a reminder of how much the pitch is as much a character in the drama of Test cricket as the cricketers themselves, dictating the style of play, the interest of spectators and the urgency of the players. The match was being played at a pace the Australians love, redolent of southern summers under blue skies and raucous crowds.For a while, the hosts were dictating play to a domineering extent, scything through South Africa’s top order with an eye on batting not too long after lunch. An overpowering first-up performance with the ball has often been the cornerstone of Australian success, setting up the scoreboard and also opening up mental scars to be exploited later, even if subsequent pitches are not as slippery as Perth or, more often, Brisbane.The pre-lunch run of wickets was not sustained, as Temba Bavuma and Quinton de Kock led a fine rearguard, not dissimilar to that performed by Faf du Plessis from another ordinary South African start on this ground in 2012. This is something else about Australian-style cricket with which the hosts are well familiar. As hard as it can be to start against the new ball, the Kookaburra eases up as a projectile after an hour or two, while the evenness of pace and bounce allows batsmen – or bowlers with bat in hand – to get into a rhythm.The captain Steven Smith had noted this on match eve. “That is one thing we have done well in Australia over the last couple of years, everyone’s contributed with the bat,” he said. “Ideally you want the batters to score some runs at the top of the order and in the middle order but when they haven’t, the guys at six, seven, eight, nine and ten have all contributed and been able to get us a big total. You want everyone working on their batting and hopefully getting us as big a total as possible.”David Warner’s bruising knock studded Australia’s domination on the opening day•AFPKnowledge of this scenario is important, as ring fields and steadier bowling replace the more hyper-aggressive stuff seen early on. Well though de Kock and Bavuma played, Smith’s men knew that the opportunity had been opened to prevent a major first innings. Thanks to Starc, Hazlewood, Peter Siddle and Nathan Lyon, South Africa’s 242 left the visitors little margin for error with the ball.That opened things up for David Warner, who remains very much a batting pugilist no matter how beatific his mien appears to be away from the crease. He and Dale Steyn had traded prognostications in the lead-up to day one, the South African’s assertion about how the “snake” can die if you “cut off the head” answered by Warner’s hope that South Africa would get too excited by bounce and send down a series of spectacular but useless short balls. It was the second prediction the proved more correct.Warner has flayed plenty of visiting attacks in these parts, most notably India in January 2012 and New Zealand last summer, albeit on a far less hell-for-leather kind of pitch. This time around, he prospered from thick edges as much as deliveries striking the middle, at one point seeming to indicate to Steyn that he did not mean to send an upper-cut flying over the slips cordon.But the pace on the ball ensured that Warner would get value for shots snicked as well as struck, and a later upper-cut was more deliberate, resulting in a ball that cleared the boundary rope even as Warner was left, quite literally, on the seat of his pants. Pressure, relieved slightly on South Africa by their lower order flourish, was quickly transferred back as runs flowed at comfortably better than five per over. Vernon Philander’s no-ball on a very adjacent LBW appeal grew increasingly costly with each passing minute.There is still plenty of cricket to be played in this match – the surface will likely quicken further on the second morning, offering the possibility of quick wickets to open up an Australian middle order lacking anyone of de Kock’s class. Even so, Smith’s Australians packed up for the evening confident in the knowledge that away defeats have not dulled their innate sense of how to play at home, particularly on red-blooded days like these. Compliments to the chef.