Live updates: South Africa vs Australia, second Test, day two from St George’s Park in Gqeberha

The covers are just tarps in South Africa which is, it is fair to say,  a tad unusual.

The covers are just placed directly on the pitch which does result in the pitch sweating a bit.

Hessian covers under the tarps do allow for some of that moisture to be picked up.

Fair play to Makhaya Ntini, that’s a decent amount of running to do in the middle of a Test match.

It was actually at the MCG where captain Don Bradman did this with the Australian team in 1937.

Australia made 9-200 before declaring as rain made the wicket almost unplayable.

England were then reduced to 76 before declaring 9 wickets down shortly before the close at the end of day two.

Then, Bradman sent out number 11 batter Chuck Fleetwood-Smith, who didn’t bat in the first innings, and number 9 Bill O’Reilly to open.

Both men made ducks but, crucially, Australia were only 1-3 at the close of day two, with number 10 batter Frank Ward in at first drop.

The following day was, being a Sunday, a rest day, where good weather rendered the pitch far better to bat on.

Keith Rigg came in at his customary number four, followed by the openers Bill Brown and Jack Fingelton, with Bradman coming in at number seven. He made 270, Australia were all out for 564, and England could only manage 323 to lose by a whopping 365 runs.

CricInfo are reporting that the pitch is, once again, covered up.

Let’s not get too downbeat though, there is still an inspection due at 8:15pm AEDT.

Matthew Breetzke has only played two Tests in his short career thus far, scoring a far from imposing total of 14 runs at an average of 4.66 as well.

Hardly much to strike fear into the Australian bowlers.

His first class average is just 37.03, but in ODI cricket he has excelled, averaging 58.73 and scoring two centuries, including one in the first ODI against the Aussies last month.

The Aussie bowlers do know all about him.

And if we get on any time soon, you’d expect them to want to re-introduce themselves as soon as they can.

I am no expert in Gqeberha weather, but I am optimistic we’ll get some cricket today and in the days ahead. The pitch being what it is, I would also imagine this game could be one that moves relatively quickly when it all gets going.

I still reckon we’ll get a winner by the end of day five.

Temba Bavuma knows he has a really tough task ahead of him tonight.

“It’s probably going to be tough here in the morning,” he said at the toss yesterday.

“Overhead conditions, looks quite moist, the wicket, so we’ll have to fight it out in the first session and set it up for the guys to come in later.”

Given the conditions it looked like a bad toss to lose yesterday morning, although to be honest, Mitch Starc and Josh Hazlewood clearly struggled to get much of anything out of the spongy surface.

Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad toss to lose?

In fact, if the pitch is soft enough for the ball to leave some indents on it in these opening two damp days, then perhaps it will become much harder to bat on later in the week?

It makes this partnership very important.

Bavuma resumes on 4 from 13 balls, with debutant opener Marques Ackerman sitting on 5 from 31.

I thought Ackerman played pretty well yesterday. He’s not an opener by trade, this is the first time he’s ever opened in any form of senior first class cricket, but he was circumspect and held onto his attacking instincts to play a very solid innings thus far.

He come in with good pedigree, the 30-year-old.

He averages 48.66 from 85 first class matches, having scored just shy of 6,000 runs and has a high score of 256.

He also captains Dolphins (KwaZulu-Natal) in the unimaginatively named CSA 4-Day Domestic Series.

He actually scored 107 runs at better than a run a ball for Dolphins against Western Province at Newlands in his last first class match in September, adding 60 in his second innings as the Dolphins fell 44 runs short in a thriller.

Yesterday was interesting on this front. When play initially got underway the pitch actually played fairly true, with very little seam movement to speak of. When it resumed later after another break in play however the ball started talking. How much that was down to the skill of Scott Boland and how much was down to some added moisture in the wicket is hard to know.

The covers have been in place for many, many hours now so it should be pretty sweaty under there. If and when play does resume you’d have to imagine the conditions will be very good for bowling.

Steve Smith said he was anxious after being hit on the head and facing the prospect of another concussion after a blow playing against South Africa in the first Test last week.

Smith has previously suffered multiple concussions in his career, and he had to go through concussion protocols after a bouncer from Anrich Nortje hit him on the helmet last Monday.

“I was a little bit anxious after the hit, to be honest,” Smith said on Sunday in a TV interview during the first of many rain delays in Gqeberha.

“It was a decent knock, and the rest of that day, I wasn’t travelling too well, and I think it was more to do with anxiety, of hoping not to feel what I felt in the past, waking up the next morning and things like that.

“So, yeah, fortunately, I woke up well. I passed all the tests, and things recovered pretty quickly.”

Read more here.

Depends where we are, Phillip. If we’re at the grounds, it pretty much just becomes a food-scrounging exercise. In the office, you’re looking at either classic catches on the wheely chairs or, if it’s the middle of the night and the joint is empty, perhaps a sneaky game of hallway cricket. Don’t tell the boss.

Simon loves a rain delay though, because it gives him a chance to talk nonsense with our dear readers. Nothing gives him more pleasure than a good tangent.

If you prefer your summaries to be even shorter than the full debrief, then check out the things you might have missed in our quick hits from day one.

Yes, there were only four, but frankly I think Henry Hanson went gangbusters to even find that many.

Not a whole lot, if we’re honest.

In fact, just 12.2 overs were possible on a soggy day one in Gqeberha.

That was enough time for South Africa to score 20 runs.

But Scott Boland needed just two balls to dismiss Aiden Markram (11) and David Bedingham (0) in successive deliveries.

I mean, that pretty much sums it up, but if you did want some more detail, here’s the full run down.