Australia v South Africa Third ODI Report Card

Featuring scoring centuries and reaching 400

Scoring Centuries
Grade: B

As a protest against the mindless repetition of the first two ODIs, Mitchell Marsh won the toss in this third ODI and elected to bat first.

He then joined Travis Head in the middle for a first wicket partnership of, uh, 250 in 34.1 overs.

With both openers having scored a century, they tapped out to let others have a go. Thank you very much, said polite young puppy, Cameron Green, and scored a century of his own off, I dunno, fifteen balls or something. Silly old Alex Carey, however, could only manage an unbeaten fifty, brought up off the last ball of the innings. He must have felt pretty silly.

Still, I dunno. If I wanted to see endless tonking with the bowlers reduced to hapless observers as they’re thrashed all around the ground, I’d probably just watch a T20.

Having said that, I did end up watching the entire innings. But that’s only because there wasn’t a T20 to switch to.

Reaching 400
Grade: D

The big risk as the innings drew to a close was obviously the prospect of Australia going past 400, famously an incredibly dangerous prospect against South Africa.