Australia Fire After The Rain As Pat Cummins Leads Charge Towards Win

Following the rain, Australia comes out firing as Pat Cummins drives them to victory.

Australia 475-4 (dec); South Africa 149-6 on day four of the third Test.
For they will need 14 wickets from 98 overs.

Play at the Sydney Cricket Ground eventually started again after fans waited through rain and darkness for an entire day and a half. Josh Hazlewood resumed his Test career after missing the previous three games due to injury. He started a slump that saw South Africa's first innings six for 149 by stumps, still 326 behind Australia's declaration score of 475 for four, on a wet pitch, after he came out firing.

Australia, who had last faced a ball on day two, elected not to bat further because play didn't begin until 1.45 p.m. on the fourth day. 

Usman Khawaja was now down to his final score of 195, short of his first Test double century. The Australians elected to chase a victory with 157 overs remaining in the game. Before the game began, there was merriment as the guests displayed the pink caps they had signed to raise money for the McGrath Foundation. The activity was anything but when it started up again.

The tone was set by Hazlewood's earliest efforts. His first two overs were practically unplayable. The South Africa captain pulled his head away from the line of the ball as it squared him up repeatedly as he scorched the ball off the seam past the left-handed Dean Elgar. His ejection was imminent, and he duly edged one in Hazlewood's third over.

Steve Smith at slip receives one. But the third umpire, Richard Kettleborough, decided that Smith's diving one-handed stunner had violated the letter of the law because he had allowed the ball to contact the ground after he had it in his fingers, just as he had with Simon Harmer's low catch in the first innings.

Forget it. Elgar needed just 10 more balls before Hazlewood pinned him with a vicious bouncer that he gloved to wicketkeeper Alex Carey for an overhead catch. His opening partner, Sarel Erwee, got off to another 18-run start but was bowled out by Nathan Lyon's spin, which was already on the attack by the eighth over and hitting in the 18th. Erwee, a different left-hander, left an off-break from behind the wicket that turned but not quite enough to miss his off-stump. Pat Cummins had already returned for a second outing by that point, and newcomer Heinrich Klaasen had just gloved Carey for two runs.

Temba Bavuma and Khaya Zondo felt that a positive attitude was the best course of action, and anytime the length was short enough to pull, they would each smash Lyon for a couple of sixes. Before Bavuma feathered another superb Hazlewood ball that straightened on a line that enticed him to play, they added 48 either side of the tea break. Zondo was defeated by the speed and cunning of Cummins, who came around the wicket to the right-hander as if to bounce him before launching a yorker that struck him in the boot. Both Bavuma and Zondo needed to continue because they both made 35.

Cummins wasn't done either. Two overs later, he got his third wicket, with Kyle Verreyne on 19 and his off-stump line and seam movement giving him a wicket.