• Just 12.2 overs possible on first day of second Test

• Bowler seizes his opportunity with two wickets

If there is a theme to Scott Boland’s Test career, it’s making the most of limited opportunity. Finding a way into the team in 2021 when it seemed that chance had passed him by, remaining fourth in line for three spots, playing at the whim of absence, yet in those moments becoming a wrecking force, causing rashes of wickets, taking first-over strikes, threatening hat-tricks and once making good.

So began the second Test in Gqeberha, another match he wasn’t supposed to play, on a day that didn’t get 13 overs bowled, yet there he was. Making the score 20 for two. Squeezing into the game through the tiniest gap, like Eugene Tooms escaping from a cell.

• Updates as the Proteas host Australia at St George’s Park

• Play start time in Gqeberha is 10am local/7pm AEDT/9am BST

• Any thoughts? Get in touch with Jim on email

Still waiting for our start. There’s very light rain at the ground, not enough to bother many of the spectators, but you can’t start a game until it’s perfectly dry, so say the playing conditions.

I like all the changes for South Africa. It’s great that Tristan Stubbs wants to be a Test player, given all his attention from the franchise circuit, but he didn’t look up to speed in Durban, where Breetzke really did take it up to the Aussies in the one-day series, and looked to have a lot to offer technically as well as in attitude.

After every stunning Scott Boland performance of recent years, many of them in place of an injured Josh Hazlewood, a reasonable ­question does the rounds: why isn’t Boland the automatic pick in the Test side, and why does Hazlewood take ­precedence when fit? In truth, ­Hazlewood has given a dozen years of answers, but on the fifth day of the ­Durban Test he provided one more reminder with a career-best six for 49, overcoming South African resistance to bowl them out for 206 and seal an Australia win by 214 runs.

Boland is good enough for a full-time spot, and may have been influential if picked. But in the side selected, Hazlewood was essential as South Africa blunted his colleagues. In a noticeable dip given his brilliant past few seasons, Mitchell Starc had radar issues: better around the wicket, though without the swerving reverse swing from his last visit to the ground, but over the wicket he often went too steeply across the right-handers, or down the leg side.

What a few days it has been in the life of Matt Renshaw. His comeback to the Test team had consisted of one innings, edged to slip for eight, before he made the trip to South Africa, where his job as opener suddenly changed to batting five.

His first two days of the first Test in Durban were spent compiling his epic 190 to rescue Australia. Then came his fourth day, hammering in the nails on a declaration by top scoring again with 82. Pulling out at 316 for six, Australia set South Africa 421 to win, then took four wickets for 102 by the close; Aiden Markram on 45 will be the main obstacle to an Australian series lead on the final day.

Australia are six wickets away from victory after another dream day – with bat and ball – for Matt Renshaw

10th over, Australia 71-1 (Maddinson 48, Labuschagne 5) The Maddo Express keeps rolling, loaded heavy with receipts. South Africa turn to spin, Maddinson puts one foot down the track and lofts Harmer down the ground for six. This is a spectacle. Follows up with a couple more hits down the ground for two runs apiece. His score keeps rattling the loose shingle numbers on the board.

9th over, Australia 59-1 (Maddinson 37, Labuschagne 4) Another edge, Labuschagne this time, getting lucky against Jansen, down through the cordon for three runs, hauled back just in time. That brings Maddinson back on strike… and he immediately whacks another one! Again width, and he plays the same shot he kept trying in the first innings, except that this time he hits the ball. Top edgy, over the cordon, four.

• Australia 390 & 33-0; South Africa 284

• Starc, Hazlewood, Cummins and Lyon share nine wickets

As a fractured news environment demonstrates, observations can be made from just about any perspective. One view of Australia’s Test team could focus on age, with the principal bowlers all having more than 33 years to their names. Another could focus on them all having more than 300 wickets.

At the first Test in Durban, an unprecedented achievement by Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon is continuing, one that they began in Mackay two months ago: being the only quartet in history to walk on to Test fields as members of the 300 club. By the end of day three they had taken another nine, South Africa bowled out for 284, trailing by 139 runs by the time bad light stopped play with Australia 33 without loss.

• Renshaw’s century was his first in Tests for nine years

• Lyon helps build second-highest ninth-wicket partnership

If the choice to ask Nic Maddinson to open in Durban was a bust, the upside for Australia was that it pushed Matthew Renshaw down to number five. From there, the Queenslander returned from 10 years on the periphery to the centre of the spotlight in the first Test against South Africa, with an innings of 190 that saved Australia from peril, settled them into stability, then lifted them to dominance.

Staunch support from the lower order was the other part of the equation, as Renshaw batted through two extended sessions until he was last man out, just after tea, with Australia’s 390 followed by South Africa’s 27 for one before stumps.

• Pat Cummins’ side resume their first innings at Kingsmead

• Any thoughts? Get in touch with Jim on email

69th over: Australia 198-6 (Renshaw 51, Cummins 39) Jansen sees how Nortje is operating and he wants a piece too. The ball is old, why not? Unsociable bouncer at Cummins, who tries to get over it like he did previously but instead wears it inside the curve of his shoulder. Then good fielding behind point denies him a run from the yorker, which is how he escaped Nortje. All of that makes Cummins uncomfortable enough to play and miss outside off stump, but the edge doesn’t come. He’s not daunted though: fifth ball of the over, dropping back past the bowler, you could forgive a lower order player for not belting through for a single. But Cummins does.

68th over: Australia 197-6 (Renshaw 51, Cummins 38) Nortje is firing up, and Renshaw is staying cool. Cummins starts the over, getting a nasty short one that he just about rides the bounce of, then a full straight one that he squeezes out behind square well enough to get off strike. Renshaw though looks absolutely perfect as he defends a mid-level short ball, then goes under a bouncer, then swishes his bat over a wider line to leave.

• Opener’s painful duck gets tourists’ series off to bad start

• Renshaw and Cummins keep hosts’ attack at bay

If we accept that sporting tenures are results-based, then the Australian selectors George Bailey and Tony Dodemaide should be conferring with the coach Andrew McDonald to submit a mass resignation. The opening moments of the first Test in Durban were enough to return the predictable harvest of one of the most bizarre selection decisions ever made for the national XI, with Nic Maddinson bowled for a torturous 33-ball duck, early impetus for Australia’s slide to 187 for 6 by the time bad light ended play.

Maddinson should not have lasted half that long, nailed on the pad by Wiaan Mulder after 15 balls but spared by umpire error and a timid South African non-review. Even that huge slice of luck never looked like becoming anything more. His innings went nowhere, shuffling, defensive, missing opportunities on his legs, dealing in extras. His only shots were a few cuts hurled at wild width, all air-swings until the bottom edge that took out his stumps.

The Test series shapes as one of unforced errors and modest scores with both sides unconvincing with the bat and relying on their bowling attack

Lost among the looking back to Australia’s Test tour of South Africa in 2018, there lies a similarity to the team about to take on that challenge in 2026. The previous side relied on a primo bowling quartet of Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc, along with David Warner’s power as opener and the middle-order ballast of Steve Smith. The rest of the batting was makeshift: Cameron Bancroft the recently added opener, Usman Khawaja with at that stage a parlous record away from home, and the Marsh brothers an entirely unknowable quantity at five and six.

This time around, the same four bowlers have burnished their careers by a further 998 Test wickets, the proven batting still consists of one aggressive left-handed opener plus Smith, and Australia otherwise remain makeshift.