Strategy, succession planning needed for Australia after Cape Town collapse

Fans of cricketing omens were treated to a masterful piece of psychological theatre before play on the final day of the Cape Town Test.

A week shy of 15 years since he rolled Australia for 47 at the same venue, former South African fast bowling genius Vernon Philander accompanied Proteas coach Shukri Conrad to the middle of Newlands and helped choose the ball to be used on the final day of this thrilling Test series.

Barely half an hour into play, Philander's most gifted successor, Kagiso Rabada, had used it to remove three of Australia's top order. With that, the game and Australia's fading hopes of winning the series were already dead and buried.

Chasing 288, which was always a huge ask, Australia buckled to be all out for 111, having earlier looked like securing its second sub-100 score in as many Tests.

The last Australian team to suffer that indignity at least had the good sense of doing it before the invention of television.

Whatever meagre sense of respectability Nathan Lyon and Pat Cummins restored with a 45-run partnership for the ninth wicket was cancelled out by the emphatic confirmation that Cummins had erred unaccountably by electing to bowl on day one and setting the stage for the impossible chase this one proved to be.

Proteas off-spinner Simon Harmer, who had quite boldly put Cummins on notice before this Test, spun his side to victory with 6-16 from 22 overs of wizardry.

Yet for all the bravado and posturing in this series, it was Harmer's lack of words, and his fighting back of tears when he picked up the man-of-the-match award, that best explained what this triumph means to South Africa.

There will be earnest post-mortems conducted to figure out where else Australia went wrong on this tour. The national selection panel should be interrogated first, and at length, yet so should several experienced batsmen who batted brainlessly at the critical moments that consigned Australia to a 2-1 series loss.

As most astute judges foretold, poor Marnus Labuschagne flubbed what will surely be his final chance at Test level. From the sixth delivery of a frantic day, the dejected Queenslander was trapped in front by Rabada and burned one final DRS review before trudging off with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Still, we should not flatter Australia so much as to think of their miscalculations and mistakes as the most decisive factors in the resolution of this brilliant Test series.

Brimming with world-beating talent and self-belief, South Africa was simply better organised and better performed in almost every facet of the game.

So many of its players — Marco Jansen and Temba Bavuma in the second Test, Harmer, Ryan Rickelton and Wiaan Mulder in this one — can now say they produced career-defining performances when it mattered most. Would a single Australian?

Perhaps it was inevitable that Rabada would do something special after missing out in the first innings, when illness shrunk his powers.

But Harmer, whose performance was the most anticipated factor in the final day of the series, was the one who really played out of his skin.

His spell of 3-5 from eight spellbinding overs before lunch left Australia a Philander-esque 7-60, and the other wicket to have fallen at that point was also his in spirit: desperate to get off strike, Cameron Green called for a quick single that was not there and barbecued Josh Inglis.

Green hung around for 110 deliveries either side of lunch, but Harmer got him too with a raging turner that zipped through the gate.

Some tough and maybe unpopular decisions now await Australian cricket — not knee-jerk reactions to public outcry, and not wholesale personnel changes for now.

But there are matters of strategy and succession planning far more complicated than Marnus's sad slump into redundancy.

The world-class bowling attack which has papered over the cracks in Australia's batting line-up for several years will be, by the end of the coming Australian Test summer, aged 39, 37, 36, and 33, with a 37-year-old its best backup.

No matter how entitled each feels to his spot, and no matter how much career statistics and public sentiment justify that entitlement, some form of attrition is inevitable. Longer-term replacements urgently require game time in Tests, not cordial-mixing duties.

Cummins, who has the most left in the tank, and Lyon, perhaps the least, will be the unhappiest with their returns in this series — just six wickets each, at a cost of 54 apiece for Cummins and 43 for Lyon.

And it is hard to imagine South Africa picking someone to bowl a combined total of 25 overs in two Tests and bat at seven, as Australia did with Beau Webster.

It is not all doom and gloom, of course, and even in this game there were some positive glimpses into the post-Labuschagne, post-Smith era.

Matt Renshaw, streets ahead as the batsman of the series with 369 runs at 61.50, is a lock at the top of the order beside Travis Head. Proven performers now, Green and Inglis should be backed to succeed.

That leaves the number three and six slots to fill, with common sense suggesting Alex Carey needs to return to batting at seven.

That three has been made to appear such a fiendish problem is at odds with the solutions staring selectors in the face. Even in the era of "false threes", it is anathema to the history of the Australian Test team to pick anyone other than a top-order specialist in that crucial slot.

Steve Smith, if his appetite for a big finale remains, may need to be told it is his duty. If he or Australia decide it is time to move on, Kurtis Patterson is a mature and proven option who makes as much sense as Renshaw did for this tour.

As for six, it is a little early to tell exactly what, and how good, Cooper Connolly will be. But for generations it has been a spot that tends to be filled by a youthful player of promise and Connolly is both of those things.

Whichever way Australia goes with the above decisions, it is probably time that a coherent rationale for Test selection is more clearly communicated to contenders and even the public, because nobody who emotionally invests in Australian cricket is buying the strange stories George Bailey has been telling in recent times.

With all that, Australia now drops to third in the ICC Test rankings and New Zealand, who it faces in a Test series starting in 38 days, rises to the top.

If the Black Caps have prepared themselves for their challenge as diligently as South Africa did in this series, there will be plenty more difficult days ahead for Australia.