Martyn wrests advantage for Australia

Australia's Damien Martyn serenely consigned memories of a black moment against South Africa to the scrap heap today to hand his team a clear edge on the second day of the First Test between the teams in Adelaide.

Though Australia's bowlers took their time to capitalise, it was Martyn's first Test century on home soil that defined the respective teams' progress on another day of combative cut and thrust cricket. More than any other factor, it also helped to quell the will of a South African side that clearly intends to make a stoush out of almost every session of this series.

After a nervous start to its innings, South Africa initially responded well in the wake of Martyn's heroics. But, confronting the massive tally of 439 that the Western Australian had so brilliantly helped to orchestrate, difficulty was never far away.

And, when Glenn McGrath (2/24) surprised Gary Kirsten (47) with a straight full toss, and Ricky Ponting flung himself horizontally to his left to reel in an astonishing one handed catch off the bat of Boeta Dippenaar (4) in a fine gully, so it was that the home team was able to wrest a clear advantage.

South Africa was reduced to a mark of 2/101 by stumps - a scoreline that still leaves it trailing its host by as many as 338 runs.

Earlier, Australia's eventual tally of 439 had looked a distant dream as it resumed in the wake of a disappointing slide in the final half of yesterday's play.

But Martyn (124*), in association with the tail, briskly put a lie to such suspicions by registering his highest Test score and his third century at this level overall.

It was batting high on quality and high on intelligence. He invested faith in his partners and his own instincts to continue to tick the scoreboard over, and to do it in a way that upset the bowlers' line and length too. Anything with width outside the line of off stump was severely punished, generally by virtue of a sparkling mixture of wristy cuts through point and drives through mid off and the covers.

He was unsettled for a period in the nineties, as South African skipper Shaun Pollock cleverly packed the point/gully region with fieldsmen and had his bowlers produce a diet of deliveries short of a driveable length outside the off stump. One shot sent the ball spearing just over the top of gully with Martyn's score on 91 and then the Western Australian should have been caught at 95 when he drove at the often luckless Nantie Hayward (3/108) and presented a chance to Pollock's right in the same position.

Otherwise, though, it was a fine exhibition. And it represented quite a way to condemn memories of his last innings against South Africa - one of 6 at the SCG in a famous loss in 1993-94 that was to cost Martyn his place in Test cricket for six years - to history's dustbin.

Excellent support came from Shane Warne (41) in an 84-run stand for the seventh wicket and then from Brett Lee (32) in one of 77 for the eighth.

Though number eleven McGrath (5) was unable to prolong a run of not being dismissed in Test match cricket since 3 August, it was barely enough to weaken Australia's position by then.

Especially when the South Africans experienced their shaky finish to the day.

After weathering a tough half hour period in the lead-up to tea, Kirsten and Herschelle Gibbs (41*) had combined well to frustrate the Australians' best-laid plans of early breakthroughs. Though he came very close to a wicket at least twice, not even a bold decision by captain Steve Waugh to introduce Warne (0/43) into the attack by as early as the fourth over proved sufficient to shift them.

But, with the score resting at 0/87, Kirsten lost sight of a full toss and only rediscovered the ball as it crashed into his front leg in line with the off stump.

Ponting's extraordinary one-handed interception of a full-blooded square drive then put the effect of Martyn's exhibition into even clearer context.