Melbourne Test, Day 3, Close
Friday, December 28, 2001

That was a good effort from South Africa. It's a tough hour, the last one of a seven-hour day. It's long day and hard to stay fresh, but Shaun Pollock will be pleased with their efforts.

They picked up their fielding. A great catch from Neil McKenzie, and it's always a risk to run on Herschelle Gibbs's arm - that was a brilliant run-out.

It's a tale of two innings - if you contrast Steve Waugh's knock today with Jacques Kallis and Neil McKenzie's yesterday.

When the South Africans came out yesterday, they were really intent on grinding the bowlers down. Their whole mentality was grinding. But Waugh's attitude was very different. He wanted runs right from the start. He wasn't really attacking the short balls, but he got onto anything close to pitched up.

He was never really set, they had him jumping around and it was pretty unattractive at times but, even though they were on top of him, he was able to get through. The different approaches to batting show up an important difference in the team's attitudes.

Waugh will be disappointed with the run-out - another one in the nineties. It was a gutsy call from Darrell Hair. I don't blame Steve for lingering, he would have sensed the keeper's gloves were pretty close to the stumps, but I think it was the correct decision.

That's enough of a lead. Australia would have liked a few more, but they won't have any fears about batting on this pitch again.

What South Africa have to do is keep the Australian's out there for seven hours tomorrow. But they have to do what Australia did today and score quickly enough to put real pressure on.

It'll be a big test of Steve Waugh's captaincy. It's as good a wicket as South Africa will ever have on a fourth day anywhere. Waugh won't want to repeat what happened to Pollock on the fourth day at Adelaide, where Australia got away from them and scored really quickly.

Ian Healy made a record 395 dismissals in 119 Tests for Australia. His comments will be appearing exclusively on Wisden.com after each session in this series. He was talking to Tim Stoney.

More Ian Healy
Day 3, Tea: Plan? What plan?
Day 3, Lunch: 'His strokeplay was fantastic'

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