Australians step out to gain useful lead

Australia will start the fourth day of the First Test against South Africa tomorrow with an overall lead of 68 runs and looking to press toward victory in this gripping battle between the teams in Adelaide.

But only after another day of consistent shifts in fortune which again served to crystallize exactly what it is that draws people to the five-day game.

There were two flurries of wickets; a superb recovery from South Africa; heartache for Australia, and the continuation of a no holds barred contest.

Five wickets for leg spinner Shane Warne (5/113) too. As well as accomplished half-centuries from Neil McKenzie (87), Herschelle Gibbs (78) and Mark Boucher (64) as South Africa made its way to a first innings total of 374 in reply to Australia's 439.

And all of it against the sub-plot being provided by the movement of umpire Simon Taufel's right arm.

With nightwatchman Claude Henderson (30), it was Gibbs who initially offered South Africa the momentum.

A needless run out ultimately interrupted the pair's stand of 62 for the third wicket but not before the in-form opener had launched several typically thrilling strokes through point and the covers. Henderson lost no fans either with a display which embraced the nightwatchman's quintessential function of provoking great annoyance to the bowlers.

It was only when they disagreed on the merits of a single, as Henderson defended at Glenn McGrath (3/94), that a defiant association was severed.

Further calamities then arrived as Gibbs played over the top of a leg break down the leg side from Warne to be stumped; Jacques Kallis (5) was trapped by a classical inswinging yorker from McGrath; and Lance Klusener (22) drove all around another delivery from Warne shortly after lunch.

It was with the Proteas at 6/214 - and looking in danger of losing control of their innings - that McKenzie and Boucher intervened. They were each playing in their first Test against Australia but showed little in the way of stagefright to turn the game back their team's way for three hours through the afternoon.

Both players showed immense concentration. They grafted for runs initially and showed a willingness to pad the ball away serially as the Australians delayed taking the second new ball and allowed Warne to persistently embark on the venture of pitching outside the leg stump from around the wicket.

But, as soon as the Australians changed tactics, so did they. Brilliantly, they plundered 54 runs from eight overs after tea as the combination of McKenzie's luxuriant driving through the off side and Boucher's power from the back foot underpinned a stand of 141 for the seventh wicket.

The Australians' attempts to take command of the match were also compromised by a predilection to drop the ball too short. McGrath and Brett Lee (0/81) were both guilty of the offence as the arrival of the second new ball coincided with a sharp incline in the run rate.

And they were just as badly plagued by the problem of overstepping the bowling crease at umpire Taufel's end.

Henderson benefited at 8 when he outside edged a Lee delivery through to wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist, and McKenzie received two reprieves - at 53 and 71 - when he gloved a ball from Lee and was then trapped on the line of his stumps by McGrath.

They were each expensive mistakes, though McKenzie ultimately had Taufel's arm moving vertically rather than horizontally when medium pacer Damien Martyn (1/3) claimed a maiden Test wicket with a sharply tailing off cutter.

Boucher also lost his will in the wake of his partner's demise, hitting a towering catch to cover off a leading edge at Warne, and tailenders Makhaya Ntini (9) and Nantie Hayward (0*) added only a further nine runs thereafter around a stream of wanton bumpers from Lee.

Australia's lead of 65 runs on the first innings was extended by a further three as Matthew Hayden (3*) and Justin Langer (0*) weathered a three-over stint before stumps.

That they endured two loud lbw appeals along the way, though, meant that little was changing in the script of an excellent Test match.

Few inches are being given. And even fewer, apart from those beyond the line of the bowling crease, are being gained.