How Pat Cummins took full advantage of AB’s freebie

AB de Villiers was in typical cruise-control, scoring a breezy 64 and looking in firm control, but the Proteas paid a high cost when he inexplicably drove Pat Cummins straight to mid-off 45 minutes after tea.

With Dean Elgar batting superbly at the other end, South Africa were 220 for two and looking to ram home the advantage of winning the toss and batting first.

Cummins had barely looked a threat in bowling 10 wicketless overs for 47 runs from the Kelvin Grove End earlier in the day.

But the 24-year-old fast bowler, having bowled three better exploratory overs shortly before tea from the Wynberg End, returned from that southern end in the 63^rd over.

His fifth delivery was over-pitched and De Villiers, who had looked most impressive dispatching the ball off his pads, launched into a drive, only to loft the ball straight to David Warner at mid-off.

From that moment Cummins was unstoppable, bowling a great line, tight on off-stump, and moving the ball away in an outstanding burst that saw him take four wickets in eight overs at a cost of just 12 runs.

South Africa limped to the close on 266 for eight, with the tenacious Elgar standing firm in the midst of all the turmoil at the other end, finishing the day on an imperturbable, superb 121 not out.

“There were two guys in, they were really set, they had a good partnership [128 in 136 minutes] going and the pitch wasn’t doing much. But then AB hit a nice half-volley to mid-off and that breakthrough was the big one because they were scoring freely before that. It’s always hard for a new batsman to come in against the reversing ball.

“I just seemed to have rhythm from that end, the ball was coming out nicely, it was one of those spells when the ball goes exactly where you want it to and there was a bit of away swing. The wind was behind me and I felt fresh and energised. We felt that if we could get one wicket it would give us the opportunity to get two or three quite quickly,” Cummins said.

Elgar is famous for sticking to his strengths as a batsman and his 253-ball effort was typically gritty.

But there was more fluency in his strokeplay than we have seen all year from the left-hander and he revealed after stumps that much of his success was down to him re-setting mentally and going back to basics.

“There was quite a bit of emotion when I reached my century because in our previous Tests, even against India, my performances have been quite up and down and I haven’t accomplished what I wanted to. So I wanted to find myself again, to be the player that I know am again. The pitch was by no means flat, even though it might have looked that way when AB was batting.

“At tea I thought we could get 380-400, but I knew that we could not afford to play loosely, because you have to get in and give yourself time to score. I don’t think it was very easy out there, but fluency or smoothness is never something I would try to achieve. Maybe there was more fluency there today because I was more positive and trying to score, which is maybe what I hadn’t done before this year.

“But I was very mindful of the Nathan Lyon threat, he’s a quality spinner and I needed to find a way to be better than him today, which was a tough challenge. I set myself high standards coming into the game and it was nice to get one up on him, which is never easy. The most important thing was that I wanted to be positive,” Elgar said.

ALSO READ:

//

For more sport your way, follow The Citizen on Facebook and Twitter.