Why did the SA ball reverse very sharply there....

What a surprise ! Aussies get beat fair and square and the whinging kicks off

You don't think it is a valid question to put Wurzel?

A team with a recent history of very deliberately cheating by doctoring their balls to enable reverse swing bowls their way to a stunning victory on the back of some very sharp reverse swing.....in a crucial match against a team previously in impeccable form....and the opposition could not get a ball to reverse significantly including an old ball they used on the very same day....

I would defy any team to successfully keep out some of those deliveries, especially those that dismissed Haddin, Marsh, Smith, all from Steyn, but Johnson, Harris, Clarke also fell to balls that swung significantly and late.  In short I doubt South Africa were likely to have won without the sharp swing that suddenly appeared. 

Perhaps it was caused by a change in the wind? Perhaps by legitimate damage to the ball?  But a team who has averaged 50 per wicket with the bat in their last 6 second innings lost 10/90, when both they and their opposition had been previously untroubled batting on the same pitch that day.   The 8 Australians who did not get to face the ball before it reversed did not make double figures.  Yet you could barely say any of them appeared to make poor errors. 

If it was legitimate, hats off the the South Africans, it was exhilarating stuff.  However, when you have a recent history of very deliberately doctoring cricket balls to create reverse swing, people are going to question you every time you get it to reverse sharply and your opponent bowling on the same pitch does not.

So we are left to ponder, are they world beaters, or world cheaters?

Which recent second innings did the last five bail Australia out Donny?

world's best bowler gets the ball to reverse as it gets old in home conditions?  Not that much of a shocker is it.

You must admit there are a few risk factors present.

Just looking at Darren Gough ripping them apart with swinging yorkers to get a hat trick....

I defy anyone to play those deliveries..................

As an Australian I can't help but think that aus is just whinging cause the saffers found an advantage they missed.

All the talk about ball tampering etc, is a smokescreen thrown up by the Aussies to try and cover the fact

that away from home their form is lamentable. Last 11 tests away won 1 drawn 2 lost 8. Aussies cant play

in conditions other than their own - their bowlers need pace and bounce to be effective and the batsmen

dont have the technique to cope with a slow deck.

Ball tampering has been going on since long before Pakistan became a country.

Bleating about ball tampering when you've just been thrashed has a strong whiff of sour grapes about it.

right...

sour grapes from aus who were completely outplayed and deserved to lose.  Should accept the defeat and move onto the next test rather than making up bs excuses.  They got blown away by Steyn - it happens.

Everyone needs to move on to the next test when they win or lose, that is telling us nothing O-T-B.

Australia do not have  good record on sh1t slow cricket pitches, great, kill the sport as a spectacle and you can probably beat Australia if you have a decent team who can handle those conditions.  Australia did not adapt well to the conditions at PE at any point in the match really.  I don't think any of us have any trouble accepting that, there is no need for any smoke screens, the record shows what it shows, Australia have it all to prove on these type of surfaces.  Mind you, the rest of the world has a bit to prove on proper cricket pitches with life in them when they play Australia...but that is another matter entirely.

It is still very legitimate to review a completed match before you move on, and remark on anything noteworthy. That is what this thread is about.  One team got their ball to go around corners on the same day that the other could not get it off the straight.  The team that got it to go around corners recently had their ball shiner sanctioned for some of the most blatant ball tampering since Afridi passed most of a cricket ball through his large intestine after eating it like an apple.  Has anyone else ever seen a pair of cricket whites with a zip pocket?  It was only there for one reason and it shows an intent to cheat, I cannot see any other way to view that.  So the intent was there and they carried through with it, we all saw that, it was just blatant and deliberate cheating.

So this team turns up a few months later in a huge match they need to win desperately or lose quite lot of status.  They get their ball to swing around corners and convert their dominance in the match that looked likely to go otherwise unrewarded into a win. 

I raise the question immediately after the match.  The losing team comes out and raises the same question in their press conference.  And the best we get as a response here is that Australians are whingers who should learn to lose more gracefully etc.  It is fine to serve up lifeless pitches so long as it suits your team, think nothing of the fact about seven people turn up to watch half of these "contests."  It is fine to blatantly cheat and if you get caught well its fine we all move on.  And then if the very thing you were trying to achieve by cheating in the first place is mysteriously achieved in some later match, well that is fine too. 

But whatever you do, do not raise a question about your opponent when you have lost, lest you be suspected of trying to make excuses to cover up your own deficiencies.  Even if you openly admit to these same deficiencies!

The world is going bonkers.  Some probably perfectly intelligent people are masquerading as complete idiots here and doing a fair job of it too.

Junior 007 may have to remove himself from this forum if this continues, and I know many thousands of people here will be heartbroken if that happens.

Centurion was a lively Green top, Port Elizabeth dour but tricky, the winning team on both occasions leveraged their strengths to win convincingly. Fortunately for us the consensus on 'Newlands' is that it's a sporting wicket,  come next Tuesday we should have a reasonable idea if either team has any right to assert dominance.

Australia opener David Warner is fined 15% of his match fee from the second Test in Port Elizabeth for suggesting South African AB de Villiers used his wicketkeeper's gloves to rough up one side of the ball.
Warner breached an article of the code of conduct for players and player support personnel relating to "public criticism of, or inappropriate comment in relation to, an incident occurring in an international match..." the International Cricket Council (ICC) said.
Match referee Roshan Mahanama said: "It was disrespectful for David to publicly denigrate an opponent when commenting on a match-related incident, and imply that a South African player was engaging in sharp practice. I'm sure David will be careful when making public comments in future."

Australia do not have  good record on sh1t slow cricket pitches, great, kill the sport as a spectacle






Yeah it's only a spectacle if the conditions favour Australia - thanks for that, got it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h98N11bSRa4

AB de Villiers, taking it to the media about Broad and Anderson ball tampering.

I don't believe for one moment either that Warner said what he did by accident.  You can see the Australians wanted to draw the world's attention to the South African's dubious ball management activities, if we can put it like that. 

If the Australians were in any way concerned about the way Warner handles himself in the media they would immediately ban him from talking to the media.  The fact they have not done this tells you his words are spoken on behalf of the Australian camp.  It seems to be very clever use of a quite unique character who can cope very well in the role of the villain.