Australia Are Going Back to South Africa. Five of Them Were There Last Time.
The world champions haven't played a Test in ten months. Australia have brought an attack with an average age of 36, a number three averaging 24, and the same five blokes who were in the dressing room in 2018. Domestic dispute begins 9 October.
In this piece
Last time
Australia last played a Test in South Africa in March 2018. You remember how it ended. A yellow square of something in a pocket at Newlands, a press conference, a captain crying at an airport, a year off for two of them, and South Africa won the series 3-1. It is the only home series South Africa have won against Australia since readmission. It took sandpaper.
Cricket Australia named the squad for the return on Monday. Sixteen men. Five of them were there in 2018: Cummins, Hazlewood, Smith, Starc, and Renshaw, who was flown in mid-series as an emergency and has been a bit of an emergency ever since. Nobody has said the word Newlands out loud yet. The third Test is at Newlands.
Since then
South Africa are the world Test champions. They beat Australia at Lord's in June last year by five wickets, Aiden Markram made 136 in the chase, and I am not going to be normal about that for the rest of my life. Then they went to India and won 2-0, which nobody does, with Simon Harmer, who is 37 and had spent most of a decade playing for Essex, named player of the series.
Then they stopped. South Africa's last Test finished in Guwahati on 26 November 2025. The first Test against Australia starts in Durban on 9 October 2026. Ten and a half months. The world champions have gone the best part of a year without playing the format they're champions of, because the calendar found other things for them to do, and the calendar is run by people who think Test cricket is something you do between T20 leagues if there's a gap.
Australia, in that time, won the Ashes 4-1, lost a Test to Bangladesh in Darwin, won the next one in Mackay, and retired Usman Khawaja. They are match-hardened. South Africa are match-rested. One of those is a euphemism and it is not the first one.
The sixteen
Temba Bavuma has captained South Africa in twelve Tests. He has won eleven and drawn one. He has never lost. He is also the shortest man on either side by a margin you could measure with a bat, and the Australian press will mention that within an hour of landing, because it is the only thing they have.
Against him, Australia have sent an attack of Cummins, 33, Hazlewood, 35, Starc, 36, Neser, 36, Boland, 37, and Lyon, 38. That is not a bowling attack. That is a school reunion. They are all still very good, which is the annoying part, and one of them, Neser, was born in Pretoria and has described playing in South Africa as a little kid's dream, which is a strange thing to dream about if you were a kid in Pretoria.
Steve Smith is 37. Travis Head opens, with Matthew Renshaw, who made eight in Mackay. Beau Webster is there. And Cooper Connolly is there, and I need to declare something. He is from Perth. He is ours. I love him almost as much as I love Aiden Markram, and for three weeks in October I will have to keep those two feelings in separate rooms. The selectors said he's in for the reintegration of his bowling, which is a phrase for a fast bowler's ankle, not a 23-year-old who is fine. Leave him alone. Pick him. Don't pick him against Aiden. Kuhnemann is in as a second spinner for St George's Park, because St George's Park turns, and because Todd Murphy isn't, and nobody has explained that either.
And Marnus. Marnus averages 24.69 in 43 Test innings since his last hundred, which was at Old Trafford in July 2023. He has been retained at three. George Bailey said it was a condensed series. Marnus has a one-day average of sixty-something in South Africa, which is the sort of statistic you reach for when the other statistic is 24.69. He is at the nets. He was at the nets when the squad was read out. He will be at the nets in Durban at 6am on 9 October and someone will have to go and get him.
The dates
Durban, 9 October. Gqeberha, 18 October. Newlands, 27 October. Play starts at half nine in the morning, South African time, which is half three in the afternoon in Perth.
I have lived in the wrong time zone for cricket my entire life. England is 2am. India is lunch on a work day. The east coast starts while I'm asleep and finishes while I'm at work. And now, for the first time, a Test series I care about more than any other will start at knock-off and finish at dinner, every day, for three weeks. Written in Perth, in the wrong time zone for everything, except this.
I was born in Johannesburg. I left in 2009, which was the year Australia came to the Wanderers and won, and I have lived in Perth ever since, which means I have watched every Australia v South Africa series from inside the other team's house. It is a domestic dispute conducted with my own furniture. Australia beating South Africa is a standing grudge, and they have sent Cummins, Hazlewood, Starc and Lyon to renew it, and I know exactly how it goes wrong, because I have seen it from both sides of the Indian Ocean, and it is Travis Head, and it takes a session.
South Africa haven't beaten Australia at home without sandpaper in thirty years. Bavuma has never lost. One of those records ends in October.
Things I loved
- Ten and a half months between Tests for the world Test champions. The calendar has no idea what it's done.
- Five men from 2018 going back to Newlands. Somebody in the ECB's old office is drafting a "rigorous" for Cricket Australia to borrow.
- Neser, born in Pretoria, describing a tour of Pretoria as a childhood dream.
- Half past three in the afternoon, Perth time. Finally.
