The Test series between Australia and South Africa moves from the greenery of Brisbane to the vast expanses of the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the annual Boxing Day Test match on Monday with the home side having the first of two chances to secure the series.
South Africa were well beaten in the opening match and will know they need to find their best form and quickly if they are going to win here and level the series up heading to Sydney for the final Test match.
Australia
I think Australia will be very pleased with their performance in the opening game of the series and it has set them up nicely for this Boxing Day Test which is always a big event on the Australian sporting calendar. Australia will be eyeing up a win here to strengthen their claims to be in the World Test Championship final next year and if they play like they did at Brisbane then you would imagine they are going to be tough to beat.
Australia were always going to win this series with the ball should they do so and they showed why that was the case in Brisbane. They might have got first use of a very green pitch but they didn’t let the pressure get to them, skittled South Africa out for a low score and were able to dominate the match from there. In an ideal world their top order would have got a few more runs but there is still time for that to come. If it does then Australia will be very hard to beat.
South Africa
The concern going into the series as far as South Africa were concerned was whether their batting unit would put up enough runs to give their bowlers the chance of winning the match for them. Those concerns were valid because we saw in the opening game that there is no guarantee of that happening. South Africa showed signs of being a little too weak with the bat when they were in England earlier in the year and we saw the same thing in the opening match.
To be fair to those bowler they did deliver the goods at Brisbane and there are few concerns they will keep the Australia batting honest but it won’t matter if South Africa can’t find the required runs themselves. You would have to say that they look a batter light anyway but even allowing for that they need to build better platforms. They will have better batting conditions here and they will need to make the most of them.
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Team News
Josh Hazlewood has confirmed he still isn’t ready to make a return to the side so Scott Boland is expected to keep his place. That means Australia could be unchanged for this game unless they pick up a late illness or injury.
South Africa have to do something about their batting. They have confirmed that the composition of their side isn’t going to change so they are going to go in with six batters but they need to find the right combination. Rassie van der Dussen scored five runs in two innings in Brisbane and could be vulnerable.
Betting
Given that he took eight wickets in the first Test match I’m a little surprised that Kagiso Rabada has a performance line of 100.5 for this match. He is a serial wicket taker with the red ball and for all there is rightly talk about how weak the South Africa batting is, we didn’t see a huge amount more from the Australia top order and one of the reasons for that is the quality of Rabada, who if anything is only likely to come on for the competitive run.
Rabada ended up scoring 173 points in that first Test with 13 runs added to the 160 he got for the eight wickets that he took. Rabada is going to get the new ball which is always the best time to bowl and while this isn’t going to be as green a pitch as we saw in Brisbane, there is still plenty of pace and bounce in the Melbourne wickets after the negative reaction to that turgid Ashes Test of a few years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rabada gets 21 runs in this match so he would only need four wickets should that be the case. That feels well within his range.
Tips
Back K.Rabada’s Performance – Over 100.5pts for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with Bet365
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