What a Test debut for Jean-Paul Duminy. In his first match, he remained unbeaten with a 50 as South Africa overhauled a massive target of 414 runs against Australia. And yesterday, he added 318 runs with the 4 tail-enders to gain a vital lead for South Africa. At the close of the 2nd day, the consensus was that South Africa would fold up quickly with a huge deficit, so no one could even imagine a lead. The latest star in the SA team could not have scripted a better start to his career.

Duminy’s stunning effort has placed Australia in a huge dilemma. Only 6 sessions remain in the match and they are behind. If they try for the win by slogging their way to a big target, they could very easily lose wickets and be fighting to save the match. On the other hand, if they bat sensibly, they would have to bat for at least 4 sessions, but then have only 60-odd overs to bowl South Africa out. Which probably is not going to happen, considering the depth of the South African batting.

This series has exposed how deep a hole the retirements of Warne and McGrath has left Australia in. For a while, it seemed that Lee was turning into the main spearhead of the Australian attack, but his improved performances were just a random blip. In the current series, he has taken 1 wicket while conceding 200 runs. Stuart Clark, injured, is out of the picture and, at 33 years, not the best long-term prospect for Australia. Let us not even talk about the Australian spinners.

However, all this is good for cricket. It is boring when you have one team dominating all the others, like how Australia used to do. Now, South Africa and India are closing (or have closed) the gap with Australia and we can look forward to more interesting contests. More of that and less of the mind-numbing whitewashes.