In reply to Morgan Woods:
and from the guardian:
Hello. Somewhere in the world, Steve Waugh is smiling. Okay, he’s not smiling – he didn’t do that on his wedding day – but he’s happy inside because Australia have taken mental disintegration to a level beyond his most sadistic dreams.
Waugh’s Australia brutalised teams in this manner, but they were playing against established inferiors. Australia are marmalising apparent superiors, and this only months after the shocking nadir of Lord’s. It’s hard to think of a precedent in Test cricket for a change in form as spectacular as this. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime turnaround sparked by a once-in-a-generation bowler
As a consequence, Australia’s Mental Disintegrators have a scarily powerful momentum that even they won’t fully understand, and after just three-and-a-bit days out of 15 South Africa are already under asphyxiating pressure to save the series. They look like a team suffering from shock. The upside is pretty considerable, however: if they come back from this mauling to win the series, it will be the mother of all reverse chokes and confirm beyond all reasonable doubt that they are one of the all-time-great sides.
In many ways the second Test starts here. South Africa need some players to get runs and show that Mitchell Johnson is not in fact the Keyser Soze of the cricket world. (He is.) The game is lost, but an honourable defeat – 342 all out, say, with a hundred from Hashim Amla or AB de Villiers – would make them feel a lot better going into the second Test.