South Africa v Australia: David Warner’s advice to Cameron Bancroft

David Warner has urged Cameron Bancroft to remember a Sheffield Shield season success to break out of his batting slump.

David Warner has urged Cameron Bancroft to remember the innings he played against the opener’s NSW side early in the Sheffield Shield season as a way to break out of his batting slump.

Bancroft has not passed fifty in first class cricket since the first Test of the summer and was out cheaply on the first morning of the opening Test match in Durban.

Australia was 5-225 when bad light stopped play on a slow pitch, where reverse swing, uneven bounce and variable pace made batting difficult.

The average first innings score at the ground in the last five matches is 309 and the match is very much in the balance.

The new ball is due in four overs and the home side will be hoping to get Australia out cheaply once it is taken.

Bancroft’s form has created a headache for selectors who have not brought a back-up opener to South Africa. Matthew Renshaw, who lost his spot to Bancroft, has made centuries in his past two Shield matches but was not included in the squad.

Bancroft earned his place in the side on the back of a number of good Shield innings, including one at Hurstville Oval against what is the Australian pace attack.

“We had a good conversation today, we sat upstairs for quite a while and I spoke to him about the way he approaches it, do you feel like sometimes you have to go after the ball or is it nervous energy,” Warner said.

“He was quite insightful with what he was saying to me and I understood him and where he was coming from.

“He puts in the hard work at training and prepares as well as he can.

“You look back at the Shield [runs] he scored against us and our bowling attack at Hurstville, one of the best innings I’ve seen from him to date. I always talk to him about going back to that and thinking about ‘how did you go so well’ and ‘how can you replicate that on the big stage here’.

“Test cricket is a different game, there’s a lot of pressure about.”

Bancroft is an intense character who is very much in the mound of his state coach Justin Langer. His opening partner believes he can turn the corner.

“I don’t think he reads the comments that you guys (the media) put up at all, but I know he’s so focused on his preparation, you can’t fault that, it’s just not happening out there at the moment. It will happen, you just need a bit of luck in this game,” Warner said.

Bancroft walked across to a ball from Vernon Philander, playing at one that was well wide of the stumps and could easily been left.

“It’s something that we talk about in our meetings about all different bowlers around the world, whether it’s Vern, whether it’s Jimmy Anderson,” Warner said. “It doesn’t matter who it is — you always try and think outside the box and have a positive mindset. We do it at training. It so happened to be that he nicked one. He knows it was a soft dismissal. We spoke about it before at length. He’ll do the same thing in the second innings and hopefully not hit it next time.”

Warner himself played a cat and mouse game with Philander, taking guard out of his crease occasionally in an attempt to put him off his lengths. The bowler won the battle, getting the opener to nick off after he had posted a fifty.

“I’ve done it before with Vernon,” Warner said. “It’s more about to try and put him off his lengths because he’s such a skilful bowler, he never really misses the mark.

“For me it was about trying to adjust his length, the ball was reversing so he was getting it to come back into me a bit so I tried to take the LBW out of the equation and try and bring the keeper up and then obviously with the keeper up it was obviously about making sure my front pad is down the leg stump line and then trying to obviously negate getting bowled or lbw so it was a good ball.

The whole day was an arm wrestle. The pitch got lower and more difficult to bat on after lunch, the ball reversed and a string of middling scores suggested just how difficult it was to bat.

The slow medium reverse of Philander and canny left arm off spin of Keshav Maharaj kept the batsmen on their toes.

Warner made the most of the easier going early but was out played by Philander with lunch due. The opener had 51 from 79 deliveries and had established a platform he should have been able to cash in on, but the South Africans had other ideas.

When Warner tried to take guard outside his crease to counter Philander’s movement de Kock moved up to the stumps and forced him back into his crease from where he nicked a good length delivery to the slip cordon.

Steve Smith posted his 24th Test half century and had been out there for 155 minutes before he chopped one hard into de Kock’s gloves. The ball ballooned gently to first slip and the skipper was gone.

Shaun Marsh should have been out LBW for 19 but umpire Kumar Dharmasena believed the delivery from Kagiso Rabada was missing the stumps. Ball tracker suggested otherwise. Unfortunately the home team couldn’t ask for a review after squandering both reviews early in the match.

One of those failed reviews was the talking point of the day. Many believe Maharaj had trapped Warner in front Dharmasena didn’t and neither did ball tracker. A lot of experienced observers scoffed at the amount of turn the machine predicted and no other delivery did that much for the rest of the day