Cummins can't paper over cracks anymore — now he has to rip up the wallpaper

Pat Cummins stood at the post-match press conference in Gqeberha on Thursday and said something Australian captains almost never say in public: the good results were hiding bad cricket.

"You can maybe paper over the cracks sometimes in a win," Cummins admitted after South Africa demolished his side by an innings and 31 runs to level the three-match series at 1-1. "A loss like this forces players to ask questions of themselves."

This was not the standard captain's shrug. This was an acknowledgment that Australia's No. 1 Test ranking has been propped up by individual brilliance — mostly from Travis Head and the pace attack — while the rest of the batting order quietly rots from the inside. The 99 all out in the first innings was not a freak event. It was the logical conclusion of a decline the numbers have been screaming about for months.

Cummins was asked directly about Marnus Labuschagne, and his answer was the verbal equivalent of a surgeon marking an X on the patient's chart. "He has to turn those thirties into bigger scores," Cummins said. "Thirties won't win many matches."

That is captain-speak for: you are running out of time. Labuschagne's last Test century was 111 against England at Manchester in July 2023 — three years and counting. Since that Ashes tour, he averages 25 in Tests across 42 innings without a single hundred. At Gqeberha, he contributed 39 in the follow-on innings while the match slipped away around him.

George Bailey, the chief selector, has publicly defended him — "he can still make a positive contribution" — but even Ricky Ponting called his place "almost untenable" before the tour began. The warm-up century in Potchefstroom off 76 balls was a tease. Non-Test runs count for nothing when the Test average keeps falling.

If Labuschagne's decline is a slow burn, Nic Maddinson's recall has been a flash fire that burned itself out in two Tests. Scores of 0, 48, 0 and 8 make for grim reading, especially for a cancer survivor whose comeback story deserved a better ending than being cannon fodder in an overseas batting collapse.

The opener slot has been a revolving door since David Warner retired, and Maddinson was supposed to be the answer. Instead, he's become the latest question. Cameron Green is expected to be fit for Cape Town — though as a batter only, given his injury history — and Josh Inglis is also available again. At least one of them will slot in. Possibly both.

Nathan Lyon was dropped for both Gqeberha Tests in favour of an all-pace attack. That worked in Durban, where Australia won the first Test by 214 runs. It did not work in Gqeberha, where Jansen and the seamers tore through Australia's brittle batting.

Cummins said Lyon's inclusion for Cape Town depends on "conditions" — the eternal dodge. But Newlands has historically offered something for spinners, and the all-pace strategy is now 1-1 on the tour. If Lyon is recalled, one of Boland, Hazlewood or Mitchell Starc has to sit out. That's a conversation nobody in the dressing room wants to have.

The only saving grace in Gqeberha was Travis Head's 121 in the follow-on innings — his 13th Test century, played with the muted celebration of a man who knew it would not be enough. Nightwatchman Scott Boland batted 166 balls for 40, an act of defiance that briefly made the game competitive before Wiaan Mulder and Marco Jansen shut the door.

Head is now the only Australian batter averaging above 40 in Tests this year. He cannot carry this team alone, and the look on his face when Mulder knocked over his stumps said everything about his awareness of that fact.

The series decider starts on October 27 at Newlands — the same ground where, in 2018, Cameron Bancroft was caught scratching a ball with sandpaper and Australian cricket's reputation was shredded overnight. Usman Khawaja has just released a book that revisits that tour. Josh Hazlewood warned before the series that the South African crowds would not let them forget.

Now Australia arrive at Newlands having just been thrashed, with a batting order that's haemorrhaging confidence and a selection debate that could see three changes. Cummins insists Australia "are not known for making knee-jerk changes after a defeat," but this is not a knee-jerk. This is a reckoning three years in the making.

The cracks are visible. The wallpaper is peeling. And five days from now, 25,000 South African fans will be happy to point out every single one of them.