Cummins' 'that undersells him' — Hazlewood's career-best 6/49 at 35 hands Bavuma first Test defeat

South Africa started Day 5 at 102 for 4, needing another 319 to pull off what would have been the fourth-highest successful chase in Test history. Aiden Markram was still there, dogged and defiant, 50 off 129 balls at stumps overnight. Wiaan Mulder was alongside him. Hope — however faint — was alive.

It lasted less than an hour after lunch. Josh Hazlewood broke the Markram-Mulder stand, then carved through what remained of the Proteas middle and lower order with the ruthlessness of a man who has waited too long for a moment like this. South Africa folded for 206. Australia won by 214 runs. Series: 1-0.

The final wicket fell shortly before tea. Hazlewood's figures: 6 for 49 off 16.5 overs. Career-best. At 35 years old. In a country where Australia's cricketing ghosts still linger in every corridor at Kingsmead.

There is a lazy narrative that has followed Josh Hazlewood for years. It goes something like: he's consistent, he's reliable, he's the third seamer behind Starc and Cummins. A fine bowler. A workhorse. The one who holds up an end while the others take the glory.

Cummins just torched that narrative at the post-match press conference. "Undersells him" is not the kind of phrase a captain throws around casually. And when you look at what Hazlewood did on Day 5 in Durban — extracting reverse swing on a surface that had flattened out, dismantling a batting lineup that held the World Test Championship trophy nine months ago — the word "consistent" does feel like an insult.

This was his best spell in 83 Tests. Eight wickets in the match. The 6/49 second-innings demolition surpassed every five-wicket haul he'd taken before. And it came on the back of an Ashes series he missed entirely — a spell on the sidelines that, for a fast bowler of his age, could easily have been the beginning of the end.

Instead, it was the prelude to the best bowling performance of his career.

Temba Bavuma had never lost a Test match as South Africa's captain. Twelve matches in charge. Unbeaten. A World Test Championship title at Lord's in 2025. He walked into Kingsmead as the skipper of the best Test side on the planet.

He walks out of it with his first defeat, and a set of questions that go far beyond one bad result. South Africa's batting has a structural problem: eleven batters passed 25 in the first innings, but only one — David Bedingham — made it past fifty. When your opponent has a man who bats 397 balls for 190, and your best response is a collection of polite thirties, you are not competing. You are decorating the scorecard.

Bavuma acknowledged as much. He credited Australia for "dominating the majority of the game" and admitted there are conversations the team needs to have about converting starts into match-defining scores. The tone was honest but measured — the tone of a captain who knows the damage is reputational as much as it is statistical.

Hazlewood's Day 5 demolition gets the headline, but this Test was built on Matt Renshaw's extraordinary first-innings 190. When Australia were 124 for 6 on Day 1, the match looked like it belonged to South Africa. What followed was one of the great rescue acts in recent Test history.

Renshaw batted for 397 balls — nearly ten hours at the crease — and put on a record ninth-wicket partnership of 134 with Nathan Lyon. The 190 was his first Test century in nearly a decade, after his 184 against Pakistan in Sydney in January 2017. He then came back and made 82 in the second innings. Player of the Match barely covers it.

As Wiaan Mulder himself admitted after Day 2, South Africa made it "too easy" for Renshaw. But even Mulder's candour undersold the magnitude of what happened. Renshaw didn't just survive — he set a new record for the highest score by an Australian at Kingsmead, surpassing Phillip Hughes's 160 from 2009, and the highest Test score by a No. 5 or lower at the ground, beating Kusal Perera's unbeaten 153 from 2019.

This was the first Test between these two sides in South Africa since the Sandpapergate tour of 2018. That series ended Australian cricket careers, triggered parliamentary inquiries, and left a stain that eight years haven't fully washed away. Cape Town, the scene of the crime, hosts the third Test on October 27.

But Durban has its own memories. The 2018 opener here — which Australia won by 118 runs — was the match that started the series before it all fell apart. Now Australia are back, 1-0 up again, and heading to Gqeberha on Sunday for the second Test at St George's Park.

Bavuma insists his side will respond. "We don't want to give them the opportunity to get back," he said. But Cummins, with Hazlewood's career-best figures in his back pocket and Renshaw's 272-run match haul as the foundation, has every reason to believe his team's best cricket is still ahead of them.

South Africa are the world Test champions. Australia just made them look like they forgot how to bat.