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From 203 for 1 to 329 All Out: Starc’s 6-72 Drags Australia Back Into the Newlands Decider

For two sessions at Newlands, the deciding Test looked over as a contest. Then Mitchell Starc took the second new ball. South Africa's slide from 203 for 1 to 329 all out — including four wickets in six balls at the death — turned a home procession into a genuine decider again.

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AI-generated illustration of a left-arm fast bowler in a plain green-and-gold jersey in full delivery stride at a Cape Town cricket ground, with a flat-topped mountain behind him

Highlights

  • South Africa slid from 203-1 to 329 all out on day one of the deciding third and final Test against Australia at Newlands on Tuesday, October 27
  • Mitchell Starc took 6-72 — his 20th five-wicket haul in Tests and his best figures against South Africa — including four wickets in six balls with the second new ball
  • Marques Ackerman fell five short of a maiden Test century (95 off 94 balls) after adding 158 with Aiden Markram (78), South Africa’s second-highest opening partnership against Australia
  • A middle-order collapse of five wickets for 29 runs was partly repaired by Marco Jansen (52) and Ryan Rickelton (42), who added 95 for the seventh wicket

Two sessions of home comfort

South Africa’s start could hardly have gone better. Australia won the toss and opted to bowl, and the Proteas were 192-1 at drinks in the second session, with Marques Ackerman on 95 off 94 balls (CricToday / AP). Ackerman and Markram had put on 140 by lunch, with Australia looking clueless after having made four changes to the side (CricToday / AP). The opening stand eventually reached 158 before Ackerman was stumped off Nathan Lyon at 158-1 in the 32nd over (Cricket World).

That stand already has a place in the record books: the 158 put on by Markram and Ackerman is South Africa’s second-highest opening partnership against Australia, behind only Trevor Goddard and Jackie McGlew’s 176 in Johannesburg in 1957, and the country’s first 150-plus opening stand since 2017 (NewsBytes).

Ackerman’s ending was the day’s individual heartbreak. Chasing his maiden Test century, he was stumped for 95 off Nathan Lyon after charging the off-spinner, having hit 12 fours and two sixes (CricToday / AP). Markram, who had been dropped off Starc in the morning session, added 45 with David Bedingham as South Africa moved to 203-1 (CricToday / AP).

AI-generated illustration of two opening batsmen in plain green jerseys walking off together at a lunch break, bats under their arms, with a stadium and flat-topped mountain behind them

The collapse: five wickets for 29 runs

What followed was the kind of hour that decides Test series. Starc pulled off a stunning catch at square leg to dismiss Markram for 78 off Josh Hazlewood, before Lyon bowled skipper Temba Bavuma for a three-ball duck (CricToday / AP). Left-arm spinner Cooper Connolly picked up his maiden Test wicket when he trapped Matthew Breetzke lbw for 2 (CricToday / AP). Starc removed Bedingham — who had made 50 — after tea and had Wiaan Mulder caught behind two balls later for a duck, with South Africa having lost five wickets for just 29 runs (CricToday / AP).

Marco Jansen and Ryan Rickelton then stemmed the tide, putting on 95 for the seventh wicket; Jansen scored a second successive half-century, finishing with 52, while Rickelton made 42 (CricToday / AP).

Four wickets in six balls

Then Starc took the second new ball and ended the argument. He had Rickelton lbw in the 81st over, and two balls later bowled Jansen; he made it four wickets in six balls when he bowled Gerald Coetzee for a golden duck and removed Kagiso Rabada for another nought, plunging South Africa from 327-6 to 329 all out (CricToday / AP). The innings closed at 329 in 82.3 overs (Cricket World). Starc bagged his 20th five-wicket haul, finishing with 6-72 — his best figures against South Africa in Tests — to fashion the turnaround (Sky Sports).

AI-generated illustration of fallen cricket wickets and bails scattered on a pitch in late golden light at the end of a dramatic day of Test cricket, an empty stadium behind

What day one actually settled

Australia’s decision at the toss was rescued by one bowler, not vindicated. Bowling first and conceding 140 without loss by lunch is normally how a decider gets away from a captain. That Australia ended the day happier is almost entirely Starc: two separate bursts — the post-tea removals of Bedingham and Mulder, then the four-in-six-balls demolition with the new ball — turned 450-plus into 329.

South Africa’s total is competitive but no longer commanding. A side that was 203-1 with two set batters will feel it left at least a hundred runs on the field — Ackerman five short of a maiden hundred, Bedingham gone just after fifty, and the last four wickets adding two runs. On a Newlands pitch now carrying footmarks for Lyon and Connolly, 329 is a total Australia can chase parity with rather than merely survive against.

The southern-hemisphere week keeps producing extremes. The same Tuesday that produced this collapse in Cape Town also produced a world-record T20I powerplay in Wellington, in the series we covered from India’s chase in the first T20I onwards. Test cricket’s version of momentum, though, is slower and crueller: it only took Starc eleven balls across two bursts to rewrite the whole shape of this match.

The bottom line: Day two now belongs to Australia’s batters. If they bat the day, the decider tilts their way and South Africa’s morning dominance becomes a footnote. If Rabada and Coetzee strike early, 329 will look very different. Either way, the match turned in the space of six Starc deliveries — and everyone at Newlands knows it.