SA vs AUS, 1st Test — Day 5 Result: Australia Win by 214 Runs as Hazlewood Takes 6/49 (AUS 390 & 314/6d; SA 284 & 206)

Test matches are usually decided long before they end, and this one was decided on the first two days, when Matt Renshaw batted for 397 balls and Australia turned 124 for 6 into 390. Everything after that was South Africa trying to escape a position rather than win from it. On the fifth day at Kingsmead they came closer to escaping than the final margin suggests, and then the second new ball arrived and the escape ended in the space of fifteen deliveries.

Set 421, South Africa were bowled out for 206 in 86.5 overs. Australia won by 214 runs, Josh Hazlewood finished with a career-best 6 for 49, and Renshaw, with 190, 82 and two fourth-innings wickets, was named Player of the Match. Australia lead the three-match series 1-0 with the second Test in Gqeberha starting on October 18.

Resuming on 102 for 4, Aiden Markram and Wiaan Mulder did what the situation asked and nothing more. Markram reached fifty off 129 balls with seven fours, and the fifth-wicket stand reached fifty off 137 balls. At drinks South Africa were 148 for 4, Markram on 62 and Mulder on 27, and the 150 came in the 61st over. For an hour and a half the draw was not absurd.

Hazlewood ended that. Mulder, 29 from 110 balls, was caught behind by Alex Carey at 155 in the 67th over, the stand worth 69 from 205 deliveries. Three balls later Kyle Verreynne was caught by Steven Smith off Renshaw's off-spin for 1, and South Africa were 156 for 6. They went to lunch on 166 for 6 from 73 overs, Markram on 69 and Marco Jansen on 7, with two sessions still to survive.

Jansen survived an Australian review in the first over after lunch and then played the way he had in the first innings, six fours and a six in a 35 that took the seventh-wicket stand to 45 off 103 balls. South Africa reached 200 in the 84th over. But Australia had taken the second new ball at 81.2 overs, and with it in Hazlewood's hand the innings fell apart.

Jansen was bowled for 35 at 201 in the 85th over. Simon Harmer was caught behind off Hazlewood for 0 three balls later. Mitchell Starc then had Markram caught by Carey for 75, off 237 balls with ten fours, and at 201 for 9 South Africa had lost three wickets without adding a run. Hazlewood finished it in the next over, Anrich Nortje caught by Nathan Lyon for 4, and the last four wickets had gone for 5 runs in 15 balls. Carey held five catches in the innings.

Australia won the toss, chose to bat, and were 84 for 4 and then 124 for 6. That they ended the innings on 390 is the story of the match, and it was built from the lower order: Cummins 43, Lyon 27 and a ninth-wicket stand of 134 with Renshaw that lasted 286 balls. A deficit of 106 is the sort of margin that lets a captain dictate a Test, and from the third day on Cummins did.

The bowling was shared without ever being loose. Cummins took the three first-innings wickets that mattered most, Lyon bowled 42 overs in the match for 90 runs, Starc took the first-innings opener and the fourth-innings top scorer, and Hazlewood, after 2 for 54 in the first innings, produced the spell that closed it. The fielding was a strength throughout: Smith held four catches in the first innings and Carey five in the fourth, and all ten first-innings wickets were catches.

South Africa did not play badly for long stretches. They had Australia 124 for 6, Mulder took 4 for 68 and Jansen 3 for 68 in the first innings, and in each of their own innings a pair put on a stand of 60 or more. What they could not do was convert. Nobody in the home side made a hundred; nobody made a fifty in the first innings; Markram's 75 was their only half-century of the match. David Bedingham made 49 and 46. Starts were plentiful, and starts do not win Tests against this attack.

The top order has questions to answer before Gqeberha. Ryan Rickelton made 0 and 2, and Temba Bavuma 3 and 1 from 45 balls across the match. Tristan Stubbs followed a first-innings 32 with 1. When three of the top six contribute 39 runs in a Test, the middle order is batting against the deficit as well as the bowling. Harmer's 25 overs for 121 on the fourth day, against batters with a declaration in mind, were the other number that hurt.

Hazlewood's 6 for 49 from 16.5 overs is the best return of his Test career, and it was assembled the way he assembles everything: Rickelton and Bedingham on the fourth evening, then Mulder, Jansen, Harmer and Nortje on the fifth day. Three were caught behind by Carey, one was caught by Lyon, one bowled, one lbw. He conceded under three an over on a day when the batting side had no interest in scoring. His match figures were 8 for 103.

Renshaw's Test will be remembered for 190, but its range was remarkable: a 397-ball first-innings vigil, a 99-ball 82 struck at better than 80 when his captain wanted quick runs, and 13 overs of off-spin that accounted for Bavuma and Verreynne. There is a kind of batter who makes a long innings look like endurance and a short one look like release. Renshaw, this week, was both, and the Player of the Match award had no serious rival.

Our pre-match preview, written before Kagiso Rabada was ruled out, said the Test "could go either way" and named Rabada versus Smith as the key matchup; neither held, Rabada did not play and Smith made 25 and 27. We did say the toss "could be decisive" and that if Australia could "reach lunch with three or fewer wickets down" on the first day the surface would flatten and allow a match-defining total. Australia won the toss, were 84 for 3 at lunch on Day 1, and made 390. We expected Head and Smith to build that total; Renshaw, whom we had pencilled in as an opener, did it from No. 5. We also flagged Jansen's angle to left-handers, and he bowled Maddinson and had Head caught in the match. Our models are built for T20, so we hold the Test calls lightly, but the first-innings framing was the right one.

Australia go to the second Test, starting October 18, with a settled side and a problem of riches: Maddinson followed a duck with a 38-ball 48, Webster made a useful 39 not out, and Hazlewood is in career-best form. South Africa must decide whether Rabada is fit to return, whether Rickelton keeps his place, and how to get a hundred from a top order that has not yet made one. Markram's 75, Mulder's 110-ball resistance and Jansen's two counter-attacks are the parts worth keeping. The deficit after the first innings is the part they must not repeat.