Bellerive Oval isn’t a venue for club cricket anymore. Bellerive Oval isn’t even formally Bellerive Oval.

It is Blundstone Arena, even though no one who is obliged to refer to the ground as Blundstone Arena refers to it as Blundstone Arena, and Blundstone Arena is only scheduled to host one red ball club match this season.

That one match is the First Grade Final. If you’re a Tasmanian club cricketer, you’ll probably know that final is a three-day match. If you’re not a Tasmanian club cricketer, now you do.

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Two-day cricket is persona non grata at Blundstone Arena, and that status didn’t change overnight. It was an erosion over two decades as Cricket Tasmania made Bellerive Oval their home, and gradually developed the suburban ground into more of a mini, and I do stress the mini, MCG.

And it meant that the ground saw less days that felt like the third day yesterday. At least for the home team. Yesterday was punishment day for Australia. The day every club cricketer dreads. The Sunday every club cricketer dreads.

At least it was supposed to be Sunday. The rain came on Sunday. Somehow, it held off on the Saturday during the hours of play, bar a tiny slice of play in the morning session. We spectators all feared the rain would steal our pizza on the Saturday, but it contended itself with a solitary, inconsequential piece of pineapple.

It stole the whole thing on Sunday before we’d even rubbed the sleep out of eyes. It would have been a theft to be celebrated by a struggling club team looking to avoid an outright on the second day. But this is a Test. All Australia had received was a postponement.

Punishment day in Tasmania isn’t like punishment day in other parts of Australia. It’s colder. If you’re not Tasmanian, the chances are good you thought yesterday was freezing. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even that windy. But it was cold, and it did spit and drizzle intermittently.



Most chilling for Australia was their situation. All the jumpers, all the inners, and all the handwarmers in the world couldn’t warm up Australia’s situation. And Australia’s situation was chilling. They were behind. Behind in less friendly bowling conditions.

They were in that position because they didn’t earn the friendlier batting conditions. They had earned precisely what they received in the morning session. A ball too old to swing conventionally or to seam that much, if at all. Conditions not allowing the ball to reverse swing. Not much spin. Good, reliable bounce and pace for the batsman.

Punishment day at Bellerive isn’t a situation for relying on funkiness, and here’s why: the most recent masterstroke in a Test here was when Michael Clarke gave Matthew Wade the ball for the last over before tea against Sri Lanka in 2012. It was after he had tried the main bowlers multiple times from both ends and the part-timers at his disposal.

Injury prevented Clarke from bowling himself, and asserting his will on the game more directly. Injury to Ben Hilfenhaus prevented Clarke from using the local guy to get the crowd into the game.

Much is written about the crowd at Tests at Bellerive Oval. Or, more accurately, much is written about who is not in the crowd for Tests at Bellerive Oval. Not much is written about the crowd itself. While small, it can be loud. They do keep the talk up, but not unconditionally. If there’s no reason to keep the talk up, they don’t. They’re not fielding in a club match.

Sri Lanka had batted well enough to quieten the crowd. Wade’s arrival at the bowling crease woke them up. It would have done that if no one knew who Wade was aside from the fact he was Australia’s wicket-keeper. But before Wade was a Victorian cricketer, he was a Tasmanian cricketer. And before he was a Tasmanian cricketer, he was a Clarence cricketer. It was the last Test Clarence’s red-brick building was around for.

Wade didn’t get the breakthrough, but it did change the tempo of the match for the main bowlers, who went on to win the match.

On the third day against South Africa, the main bowlers had to take the wickets, and they had to take the first wicket. There is no Wade in this Australian team, or anyone who has any local links. All the locals are too busy practising their batting.



There is no red-brick building either. That area is now covered by the Ricky Ponting Stand. The keeper of the Ricky Ponting flame these days is Steve Smith. He did bowl himself. He bowled himself after none of his main bowlers could take a wicket, after Peter Nevill missed the only chance of the morning to that point, after Australia had bowled 23 overs without success.

Smith knew he was the best funky option he had, at a ground that has never smiled on leg-spin, and will probably never name a stand after a leg spinner. It was a measure of how bad Australia’s morning went that Smith felt he had to give himself an over, as one last throw of the dice before the second new ball.

Leg spinners in Tasmania fit into two categories: people who are Stuart MacGill, and people who look like Stuart MacGill. One is a professional cricketer, and the other is Glenn Kefford, and more people make a living as political science lecturers in Tasmania than as leg-spinners.

After Nathan Lyon’s next over, Australia could finally take the second new ball. Their last answer to the question, “How are we going to win this Test?”

Except it wasn’t an answer. It wasn’t an answer whether Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood were bowling, and it was clear that it wasn’t answer in and of itself in their first overs with the new ball. It wasn’t swinging. It was only after light drizzle that the pitch offered some more seam movement. The wicket of de Kock, for an excellent 104, was the only bright spot of the first 11 overs of the second new ball.

The twelfth over of the second new ball. There were four utterly recognisable dot balls. Then there should have been a wicket, instead there a dropped catch at mid-on. If you’re wondering why that catch was dropped, it’s because you don’t understand the cold and everything that had gone before that ball in the morning session.

Bavuma had not scored down the ground all morning, a morning of two and a half hours, he had defended the first four balls of the over. Ferguson dropped the catch because he was wrong-footed and late getting to the ball, and on a warmer, better day for Australia, he would catch the ball. A sign of improvement for Australia will be when those sorts of catches are taken on these sorts of days. It’s hardly surprising that a player on debut in this situation missed the tough chance.

When lunch arrived, South Africa had only lost one wicket in the morning session, and led by 203. After lunch, Australia’s day did get a bit better, thanks primarily to Josh Hazlewood. They only needed 8.5 overs to end the South African innings after the break, even if the increased seam movement was a bad omen.



It was surprisingly still outside when Australia started the task of getting past South Africa’s 241-run lead. Kyle Abbott immediately got the ball to swing more than Australia had managed, but it was the ball that didn’t swing and was bowled on the premise that it would swing that strangled Joe Burns down the leg side. To rub salt into the wound, drizzle forced a brief delay immediately after the wicket.

It was after the rain break that Australia’s day finally became more noticeably better, with both David Warner and Usman Khawaja scoring freely. Vernon Philander’s run-down-the-pitch-as-though-you-bowled-the-bloke “appeal” against Warner was turned down, and the decision was confirmed as accurate on review.

Yet the luckiest break for Warner came fourth ball before the tea break, when he edged a cut off Abbott to third slip, albeit high. Dean Elgar, instead of attempting the catch, took evasive action as though he was still fielding at bat-pad, to the derision of the crowd and the disbelief of his teammates.

First Ferguson, then Abbott. There must be something in the water. It meant Warner and Khawaja were still together again at tea, having taken Australia to 1-54.

The evening session. The session that Australia never looked like batting to in the first innings. It was pretty much impossible for Australia to not reach that mark second time around by dint of when the innings started. The last session was good, hard Test cricket. South Africa bowling well, Australia batting well.

A brief rain break allowed Abbott and Rabada to be an unchanged bowling partnership for the first 16 overs of the last session, and Warner paid the price. It was an unlucky dismissal, with the ball coming off his hip and elbow and down onto leg stump. But it fitted into the wider context. The South Africans had been looking to bowl straight and tight at Warner, and both bowlers had been following the plan for several overs. Then they were straight back onto the plan after the brief rain break.

After Mitchell Marsh was dismissed LBW at the WACA in the second innings, Steve Smith had joked that it looked like Rabada was bowling leg spin per ball tracking. Rabada might as well have been bowling leg spin to Smith with a few deliveries last night. The cutters were going a long way, but as Smith kept playing the initial line, the ball kept missing the edge of the bat.



The only runs that Smith scored against Rabada yesterday was a drive on the up against another leg cutter that went for four and would have discouraged no captain ever. Philander replaced Rabada after that over, but it wasn’t because Du Plessis was unhappy with Rabada.

Du Plessis decided to make a double change when he took Rabada off: Philander for Rabada at the Church Street End, and Keshav Maharaj for Abbott.

The last moment of the day when South Africa might have looked like taking a wicket was when Philander convinced du Plessis to review another LBW shout off his bowling, this time against Khawaja. Umpire’s call on height.

The last six overs saw 28 runs scored, and they weren’t 28 inadvertent runs. Every one of the five fours scored by Khawaja and Smith were laced with positive intent. Khawaja greeted Maharaj with four over mid-on, and whether Maharaj can lock down an end as he did at the WACA could well be the difference between a South African win and a draw.

In his prime, one of the reasons Xavier Doherty was an effective Sheffield Shield bowler was because he could lock down an end when the opposition was trying to fight back from a large deficit in the third innings in decent batting conditions. He wouldn’t necessarily take wickets, but he didn’t always have to take wickets.

Maharaj may find he doesn’t have to take wickets in this match, considering how well Philander, Abbott and Rabada have bowled. This is no two-day club match. Australia haven’t avoided the outright yet. They still need 120 runs to even make South Africa bat again, and there are still two days left in the match.