Australia set 288 to win on final day after South African centurions turn tide
Execution, not fortune, decided the fourth day of the third Test at Cape Town. Australia’s celebrated four-man bowling operation, the unit carrying 1,674 Test wickets between them when play began, managed to add only four more by stumps. In the field of delivery, that shortfall proved decisive. A lead of 40 became 287, and a fourth-innings target of 288 now stands between South Africa and a series-shaping result.
The operational turnaround was built by Ryan Rickelton and Wiaan Mulder, two batters whose working methods on the day ran counter to their public profiles. Rickelton, a franchise circuiteer who spends most of his year scoring or keeping in 20-over blocks, had underperformed through this series: dismissed for none and two while pinch-hitting as an opener in Durban against Josh Hazlewood, then making 31 down the order in Gqeberha. He had looked like a modern cricketer turned anachronism in this ancient format.
Yet his first-class scoring rate, one third of his T20 strike rate of 150 per hundred balls, pointed to tools untouched by the global Mumbai Indians conglomerate. Those were the skills deployed here. Rather than follow the top order’s assumption that a placid surface was made for attacking shots, Rickelton and the fellow white-ball dasher Matthew Breetzke absorbed everything Australia’s freshly rested bowlers could deliver.
The conditions demanded specific technical responses. With no lateral movement but good bounce for the short ball and increasingly marked turn for Nathan Lyon out of the footmarks, the pair handled both threats. Rickelton punctuated defence with a single in most overs, keeping the innings at least rolling in first gear. The first session added 62 runs, taking the lead to 102.
Breetzke’s dismissal at lunch, pulling impulsively to long leg, appeared to swing execution back Australia’s way and ended Pat Cummins’s stretch of 372 balls without a wicket, unprecedented in his career despite some good spells. But Rickelton was set like cement, and Mulder matched that durability through lunch and beyond. Lyon kept ripping his off-breaks, drawing an inside edge from Rickelton into Alex Carey’s shin behind the stumps and seeing countless balls deflect safely off body or bat, but reward never came. Rickelton picked off rare bad balls from the quicks, driving when overpitched and playing on the up once the new ball showed no sign of seam.
The partnership reached 154, the lead a daunting 235 on a rapidly wearing pitch, before Rickelton’s century, completed after a slow march through the 90s, ended in chaos. Mulder’s reverse-sweeping sent a full toss to the lone fielder in an acre, Inglis at backward point, who spotted Rickelton running and Mulder standing still. Marnus Labuschagne gathered the throw at the bowler’s end. Run out for 101.
A late collapse threatened to undo the work. Marco Jansen, set up for a blitz with 70 minutes remaining, holed out on the pull to Lyon off Starc for nought. Lyon then claimed his first wicket of the day when Simon Harmer shouldered arms to one that turned sharply, and Gerald Coetzee ran himself out for the same score via Labuschagne’s direct hit from the cordon. At nine down and 251 ahead, the lead suddenly looked light.
Mulder repaired the position with Kagiso Rabada in support, farming the strike and moving from 82 to 115 before falling to Cummins in the last over, caught down the ground attempting a fifth six. A match that already had one full innings occupy the first day will now have another fill the fifth, and the series will tilt one way or the other with it.