In the old certainties, the lark was on the wing, God was in His heaven and all was right with the world, at least for batsmen, who could roll a double-fronted wall of bat and body down the pitch and never risk an lbw. For all of Steve Smith's disappointment at the WACA on Friday, his much-discussed dismissal was a win for the laws of cricket and a belated payback for bowlers.
Smith's downfall, one of many turning points in this whiplashing Test match, was only unusual because cricket has been unfair for so long. The Australian captain, facing his fourth delivery, ran down the wicket to finger-spinner Keshav Maharaj and missed the ball. In olden times, when a batsman missed the ball inside the line he was a near-certainty to be stumped, but when he made the same error outside the line of the ball he got off scot-free, as long as his pads got in the way.
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Questions over Smith dismissal
Steve Smith was out in controversial fashion, given LBW despite advancing a long way down the wicket.
The so-called benefit of the doubt went to the batsman because umpires declined to speculate on what would happen between the pad and the stumps. Enter technology, the bowlers' white knight. Umpire Aleem Dar gave Smith out, knowing that if he had made a bad error the ball-tracking thingie would correct him and reprieve the Australian captain. It didn't; Dar's eyesight was good enough. Smith showed enough incredulity, and possibly dissent, to raise the question of whether he will be suspended from the second Test. He left the field holding his bat by the wrong end and shaking his head as if to say this was not the game he grew up playing. As it turned out, this wasn't even the game they had been playing for the previous hour. It is hard to remember a Test that has reversed direction so resoundingly, so suddenly, and from such an unpromising moment as Dale Steyn's breakdown.
Through the morning, David Warner and Shaun Marsh had continued their procession – Warner's sleek, Marsh's laboured – towards apparently inevitable centuries and a position of dominance for their team. Australia had reached 158 without loss when Warner fell for 97, but Steyn's throaty celebration was his last meaningful contribution. The South African spearhead risked blowing his foofer valve in the excitement, but instead he blew his tender right shoulder. As he left the field in Warner's wake, a mood of mourning settled over the game. How could the Proteas recover without their main man? Was this Test (never mind Test cricket) dead, again?
Somehow, Steyn's injury shocked his teammates into life. Kagiso Rabada found warp-speed from around the wicket and yorked Usman Khawaja with a majestic inswinger. There was no death rattle, just the donk of stump hitting earth. Hello. Then came Smith's lbw to Maharaj, a handy maiden Test wicket for the debutant. The debate around Smith's dismissal, a festival for cricket's army of pro bono bush lawyers, was a diversion: as the analysts picked apart the Decision Review System all over again, Australia were disintegrating without any help or hindrance from the technology. They were failing at cricket. Presented with a gift horse, they looked it squarely in the mouth.
Shaun and Mitchell Marsh, though born eight years apart, were out like identical twins either side of lunch, unable to read the late swing of Vernon Philander. The increasingly impressive Rabada, Philander and Maharaj ran through the rest as Australia lost all 10 wickets for 86 runs. They ended up with a two-run first-innings advantage, which must have felt more like a significant deficit. Call it a humiliating lead.
![Unhappy: Steve Smith throws his arms out in frustration after he was given out lbw.](/web/20161106233116im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/i/h/f/0/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsiiib.png/1478266826064.jpg)
In the evening session, a more settled rhythm was established as the Australians tried to claw their way back to the state of mind they had enjoyed earlier in the day and South Africa's top order sought to repel them. But the two days of this supposed wake for Test cricket have been truly extraordinary, with miraculous reincarnations by the hour and the unexpected lurking around every corner. When it's so hard to keep up with what has already happened in this remarkable match, only the brave would say where it is going to turn next.
It is throbbing with life. Far from dying, this game is shedding its dead skin and its old certainties.
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