Australia begins Day 4 in Durban with a 139-run lead over South Africa with all ten second-innings wickets intact, but with a curly batting dilemma to ponder. Live updates below!

An outstanding performance with the ball – and some freakish Steve Smith catching at slip – saw the Proteas bowled out for 284, before a more expansive Nic Maddinson (17 not out) and Travis Head (10 not out) took the visitors to stumps at 0/33.

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Live updates from Day 4 of the First Test below!

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Outside of brief periods of life, the Durban wicket has largely remained placid, especially across the last two days, and the ease with which tailenders Simon Harmer, Keshav Maharaj and Anrich Nortje put on 52 and 35 for the ninth and tenth wickets to take the total past 250 may give Pat Cummins pause for thought as he mulls when to declare.

The Proteas famously chased 340 in Durban to defeat Australia in 2002, with former great Alyssa Healy urging the visitors to bat sensibly rather than attempt to set up an early declaration.

“No doubt that’ll (declaring) be at the back of their mind … (but) you can’t really think too far ahead,” Healy told foxsports.com.au.

“That first half hour to an hour is often really important: if you try and go too hard early in the day and you all of a sudden lose three wickets, then you’re on the back foot and you almost let South Africa get back into the game.

“They’ll have an opportunity to have a really good look at the conditions this morning and what the bowlers are going to come up against, and then hopefully get on top of the conditions.”

Healy also wasn’t prepared to rule out a Proteas comeback, either, despite a disappointing first innings marred by a number of reckless shots.

“The opportunity to keep themselves in this game is to bowl Australia out,” the ex-Australian women’s captain said.

“So I think overnight they’ll probably have sat down and tried to work out those plans and how to execute them on that surface.”

Match details

Venue: Kingsmead, Durban

First ball: 6:30pm (AEDT)

Watch it live: On Fox Cricket (channel 501), and streaming on Kayo, from 5:30pm (AEDT)

Teams

Australia: Travis Head, Nic Maddinson, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith, Matt Renshaw, Alex Carey (wk), Beau Webster, Pat Cummins (c), Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood.

South Africa: Aiden Markram, Ryan Rickelton, David Bedingham, Temba Bavuma (c), Tristan Stubbs, Wiaan Mulder, Kyle Verreynne (wk), Marco Jansen, Simon Harmer, Keshav Maharaj, Anrich Nortje.



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