South Africa vs Australia LIVE Updates, 3rd Test Day 1: With the series perfectly poised at 1-1, South Africa host Australia in the third and deciding Test match at Newlands, Cape Town, starting today. The visitors won the first game by 214 runs before the Proteas bounced back with an innings-and-31-run victory in the second Test. Fast bowler Gerald Coetzee is set to return to Test cricket for the first time in nearly two years after being named in South Africa’s playing XI for this match, replacing the injured Anrich Nortje . ( LIVE Scorecard )
South Africa vs Australia LIVE Score, 3rd Test Day 1: Australia won the first game by 214 runs before the Proteas bounced back with an innings-and-31-run victory in the second Test.
Australia and South Africa now walk into Newlands in much the same spirit with the series locked at 1-1. Shades of 2018 – Deja vu is an odd thing to feel in a Test series, but anyone who followed these two sides eight years ago is feeling it right now. Go back to 2018. The spotlight falls on Newlands, the ground where 2018 turned toxic. In 2018, South Africa took the series 3-1. Spring in their steps – St George’s Park in 2026 will go in the pantheon of great bounce-back displays for South Africa in Test cricket. Bavuma’s 179 will be remembered as one of the great Test knocks, a long and disciplined vigil that blended nerve, a calm head and, of course, technique that held up through every hour of it. The tail and the middle order deserve every bit of credit for hauling South Africa to 425, but the scorecard also shows a top order that offered very little. It took him just four balls to strike, sending Maddinson back, and Jansen then landed gut-punch after gut-punch, his five-for bundling Australia out for a mere 99. Anrich Nortje bowled only 3.3 overs in Gqeberha before pulling up with a groin injury and leaving the field. Bowled out for 99 in Gqeberha, their third-lowest total on South African soil, they were asked to follow on for just the third time since 1988. Durban’s recovery from 124/6 to 390 rested on Renshaw’s century, and in Gqeberha nobody played that role until the follow-on, where Head salvaged some hope with his 121. Scores of 4, 39 not out, 13 and 8 across the series so far have left the middle order short of the assurance it needs from him. Then there’s Steve Smith, whose series has been well below his usual standard, with a high of 28 so far. In the last five years in Cape Town, pacers have taken 84 wickets to the spinners’ nine, a gap so wide that the surface almost writes the selection note itself. Team form (Last 5 Tests, most recent first) – SA – WLWWW | AUS – LWWLW. Battle under the Table Mountain – Cape Town has long been a happy hunting ground for Australia, who have won 10 Tests there and lost only four. South Africa have won three of the last four meetings at Newlands, and Australia’s most recent visit, in 2018, ended in defeat.
Markram, Ackerman, Bedingham and Breetzke managed only 21 runs between them, which means the four men at the head of the innings contributed barely a twentieth of the total. The final frontier – Cape Town has a legend about a pirate named Van Hunks who climbed Devil’s Peak with his pipe and was challenged by a stranger to a smoking contest. The stranger was the Devil. Neither would yield, and the story goes that the white cloud spilling over Table Mountain, the famous tablecloth, is the smoke of that duel, still going. Rain nearly decided Gqeberha before a ball of any consequence was bowled. Nearly two days erased and the match seemed headed for a handshake. Then Temba Bavuma turned that Test into his own slow-burning statement, a hundred built over hours of patience, and the South African bowlers took the cue and dismantled Australia as a unit. That levelled a series Australia had opened in style at Durban, where Matt Renshaw’s batting brilliance and Josh Hazlewood’s lethalness with the ball had given the tourists the early say. They are the two best Test sides of this World Test Championship cycle, one holding the mace and the other chasing it, and after two Tests they have not found a way to blow the other out. Australia struck first at Durban. The caravan then moved to Port Elizabeth, a city that has since become Gqeberha, and South Africa answered with a win of their own to square things up. This time the first two acts have unfolded in the same order. The calendar is the one thing that has changed. That series stretched over four Tests, while this one has three, so there is one fewer chapter left to rewrite. Sandpaper Gate came out of that Test and left a long chill between the dressing rooms. It remains a black spot on a beautiful sport, though the page was turned long ago and both camps have moved on. Still, the pattern is hard to ignore. Does history keep marching in step, or does this series finally go off script in Cape Town? Victory would have been the farthest thing from anyone’s mind. Then Bavuma and Jansen began to turn the match around, one patient session after another, and Simon Harmer joined in to finish what they started. Australia had seen this script in Durban, where Matt Renshaw hauled his team out of trouble, and this time they were on the receiving end of it. A mountain of runs can hide a lot, and here it hides a real concern. Rescue acts do not repeat on demand, so at Newlands the Proteas will want their batters at the top to share the load instead of leaving it for Bavuma and the lower order to clean up. Rabada leads the pack – Rabada’s return turned a threatening pace attack into a machine running in perfect sync. In the second innings, Rabada’s four-fer sucked the wind out of the tourists’ sails. They stiffened up a little, only for Wiaan Mulder to rattle the stumps three times with corkers of surgical precision and seal the job. For all the pace attack’s sparkle, one worry crept in. Short of a key weapon, the attack still refused to blink and fired on all cylinders anyway. Now Nortje is out of the Cape Town Test, a big blow for the hosts, though no additions or changes have been made to the squad. That leaves the door open for Corbin Bosch and Gerald Coetzee, the frontrunners to step in, with Dane Paterson another pace option. They do have Maharaj as a spin option who sat out after Durban, but his inclusion looks highly unlikely unless, of course, conditions force an extra spinner. Cracks in the Baggy Green – Australia’s batting problems are no longer a whisper. Across two Tests, the innings that held them together were individual rescues, not team efforts. That points to the real issue, which is an unsettled top order with no anchor. The selection questions start at the top. Nic Maddinson has not held on to the opener’s slot after a string of low scores, and he looks likely to miss out at Newlands. Marnus Labuschagne has stalled in the thirties and keeps failing to turn starts into something that counts. Help may be at hand, though. Cameron Green and Josh Inglis have recovered from their injuries and joined the main sessions under Table Mountain, so one of them, or both, could walk straight into the XI. There pops another question – about the big Beau. Australia will be hoping the stalwart has kept his best for the last act, in one of the biggest Tests of the year. Selection dilemmas – Pick Boland or pick Lyon? Australia are back at that same fork. Boland ran the show in Gqeberha, taking wickets and chipping in with the bat, yet there were passages when his side looked around for an off-spinner and found nobody. Newlands makes the call harder, and it leans one way. He, though, has a record that argues against writing him off. He took a five-wicket haul across the match when Australia last played here. Everything else looks settled. Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood are all fit and firing, and each has made a mark this series, even if Cummins went wicketless last time out. Hazlewood and Starc have been the pick of the tour’s bowlers, and Boland’s monumental showing in Gqeberha only strengthens the case that this attack needs little tinkering. The recent story is less kind, though. History flatters the visitors, but the form guide tilts the other way. Let’s see who comes out victorious this time around with the series level. Here’s hoping for a blockbuster conclusion to an already engaging Test series between two fiercest rivals.
And more importantly, they will be keeping their fingers crossed that he is fit enough to play after dealing with a neck injury and a prior concussion scare earlier.
