Smith drops strong hint Ferguson will replace Marsh in Hobart

South Africa has insisted a ball-tampering controversy had been “blown out of proportion” on Friday as it kept its focus on a third straight series win in Australia. In 2009 South Africa played two ODIs at this ground during a five-match ODI series. “They (South Africa) will have the same issues”.

“Their batting line-up has a frail look about it”.

Steve Smith has had a brutal day in Hobart.

“As individuals, the Australian players are under huge pressure”.

The 67-year-old is travelling to promote his autobiography Dennis Lillee and recalled the days when his $200 Test match payments struggled to cover his appointments.

He averages 81.75 in Hobart, while the pressure is on Smith, who failed twice in Perth and made just 10 when last playing there previous year.

While question marks hang over the captaincy of Steve Smith, Faf du Plessis is in the process of making a strong case to permanently replace AB De Villiers as the team’s captain. However, a series defeat at home, particularly one that happened to be clinched in the same deflating fashion as the Australians were thumped at the WACA, would ramp up the heat on Smith’s Australians.

“He isn’t in the best form with the bat either, which compounds the problem for him personally and for the team as a whole”. Even in at least two of the Test matches in Sri Lanka, they were really in dominant positions and then they let the opposition make a comeback.

South Africa opener Dean Elgar has rejected former Proteas skipper Graeme Smith’s withering assessment of a struggling Australia.

But Neville was soon out for three, trapped lbw by young seamer Kagiso Rabada after Du Plessis asked to review the not-out decision.

“It’s almost laughable for him (Smith) to be making comments on the culture of the Australian team”, Sutherland told Fox Sports on Saturday. I think the experience within the group, we’ve had a lot of a success as a team and as individuals that there’s no doubt we can turn it around.

“It is a long series, I would expect India to play well at stages throughout but England are off to a positive start and we have to wait and see”, he added.

Hobart is known for it’s prodigious swing which will give the quick bowlers every opportunity to make an impact and Australia will be looking for a response from a bowling attack that looked undercooked in Perth.

However, their first-innings collapse proved costly, slipping from 158-1 to 244 all out in response to South Africa’s 242. But if our boys look at their performances, they’ll know they can do a lot better than that. The second innings I came in and the first ball nipped and swung.

Cummins paying his own way to Perth to work with one of the game’s greatest fast bowlers is reminiscent of Lillee booking himself in for physiotherapy during his playing days.

“When you get bowled out for 85 it probably is (a crisis), isn’t it?”

At a time when Australia’s batsmen are mired in a damaging pattern of failures, Joe Burns has returned to the Test fold with confidence derived from breaking out of his own.