Harmer takes career-first 10-wicket haul

Under sunny Cape Town skies, the doom and gloom of Durban was forgotten as South Africa claimed a glorious come-from-behind series victory against Australia.

The win was secured by 176 runs, with Australia, hitherto Test cricket’s No 1 ranked team, embarrassingly bowled out for 111, in 57.1 overs on Saturday afternoon.

All forecasts for a tense final day, with Australia chasing 288, evaporated in a Kagiso Rabada-Simon Harmer hurricane in the first session, which reduced the tourists to 60/7 at lunch.

It took all of the second session to finish it off. There was an amusing lead up to Harmer’s fourth wicket with the Australians choosing to leave their captain Pat Cummins to face the off-spinner and Cameron Green to handle the seamers from the Kelvin Grove End.

Besides a two for Cummins, no runs were scored, until Temba Bavuma decided to switch Harmer from the Wynberg End.

The change paid immediate dividends with Green charging out of his crease, and being bowled by a wonderfully flighted off-break that spun between the batter’s bat and pad and clipped the top of off-stump.

Harmer claimed a third Test five-wicket haul when he trapped Cummins lbw from around the wicket and then zipped one past Josh Hazlewood’s defence’s, to claim career-best figures of 6/16. It also gave him a first 10-wicket haul, and certainly justified the decision to call Shukri Conrad last year and ask if there was still room for him in his plans for the side.

He finished with 10/120 in the match.

This series win was further evidence of the resilient nature of this Proteas team, which was underdogs against the Australians in the World Test championship final year, fought back from 0-1 down to draw a series in Pakistan and then won 2-0 in India — a first series win there for 25 years.

After Durban, the selectors acted decisively, dropping Tristan Stubbs, Kyle Verreynne and the country’s most successful spin bowler Keshav Maharaj. Bavuma led from the front to help claim an innings victory in Gqeberha.

This final Test was anything but smooth sailing. South Africa flew out of the starting blocks in the first session after being gifted the opportunity to bat by Cummins and then duly threw away that advantage four hours later.

They then had to chase the game as Australia grabbed a 100-run first innings lead, but this is a Proteas that seems to thrive when the going gets tough. It was from 110/6 that Bavuma led the come-back at St George’s Park and at Newlands, with five wickets lost in the second innings and the lead only 80 runs, that Ryan Rickelton and Wiaan Mulder, put on a 154-run partnership that put their side in a position where winning became realistic.

“We like to make it hard for ourselves,” Rickelton said on Friday evening. “But (Shukri Conrad) always errs on the side of positivity. Those are always the conversations, whatever we get, it’s going to be enough. It has to be enough. And that belief that he keeps instilling in us as players, it echoes around the changeroom. Temba leans on it as well. We always emphasise that there’s an opportunity to do something special for the team every single day.”

It is a series win to be treasured, as it’s only the second time South Africa has beaten Australia on home soil in the post-isolation era.