Their best bowler was injured. The conditions didn’t offer them much. But South Africa’s bowlers announced the entry of South Africa in the series.
The WACA can be the sort of place where both teams end up with totals in the mid-200s, with bigger totals in the second innings. When Australia were 0-150, with a man at deep point for David Warner, this didn’t look like one of those matches. Even after Warner got out, Steyn got injured immediately afterwards. But South Africa found a way.
Dale Steyn’s protégé, Kagiso Rabada, took out Usman Khawaja’s off-stump. Keshav Maharaj’s first Test wicket was Steve Smith, who was not too far away from breathing distance when he was struck on the pad.
Then Vernon Philander removed the Marsh brothers. Rabada caught and bowled Adam Voges. Maharaj removed Mitchell Starc and then Pete Nevill. Then Josh Hazlewood steered a short ball from Philander to JP Duminy in the slips, swiftly followed by Nathan Lyon.
But it wasn’t just the balls that got wickets that did for the Australians. It was all the other balls. Rabada’s ball to remove Khawaja was a corker, but corkers weren’t the story of the day.
The story of the day was pure Test match bowling. Consistency for hours on end, on a pitch not offering them much and with a lightning-fast outfield, until the batsmen made an innings-ending mistake.
New Zealand were expected to do that last summer. Remember? Before the revision of the New Zealanders as nothing more than a lightning rod for Australian success, and not a successful team that was expected to do well.
But Trent Boult, Tim Southee and the rest of the New Zealand attack could only put Australia under the hammer in the day-night match.
They had spent long hours in Brisbane and Perth not looking like taking a wicket. The New Zealanders were soon followed by the West Indies, who were not expected to score enough runs or take enough wickets at any stage.
Before that season, India was in Australia, with Ravi Ashwin the only bowler who looked dangerous throughout the series. He wasn’t picked for Adelaide, and didn’t have enough support in the other three Tests. India didn’t take 20 wickets in any of the four Tests.
In the season before that, England’s bowlers weren’t too bad, but their batsmen meant that they needed to be magic.
In the season before the Ashes whitewash, Sri Lanka couldn’t take down Australia. But South Africa managed it, in Ricky Ponting’s last match.
The South African bowlers gave the batsmen a decisive advantage on the first night and the second morning.
Until the second day of the current Test, it was the last time Australia had seen top-shelf team bowling from an opposition team in a day Test for nearly four years.
Australia had a lead of two after the first innings. South Africa’s bowlers ensured that the lead wasn’t 200.
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