Australia Beat South Africa in Durban as Veteran Josh Hazlewood Takes a Career-Best Six After Missing the Ashes

Matt Renshaw will take the headlines from Kingsmead, and he earned them: a towering first-innings hundred, more runs in the second, the player-of-the-match award. But the Test was settled on the last afternoon by a fast bowler Australia had spent an entire home summer without, and he settled it with the best figures of his Test career.

Josh Hazlewood has never bowled for spectacle. His craft is repetition: the same length, the same seam, until the batter’s patience runs out before his does. He called this pitch a grind and said he hoped a few cracks would open up. South Africa spent the final morning proving him right about the grind. He made his own cracks.

The morning South Africa tried to wait him out

South Africa never had a realistic route to the target. Their route was survival, and for a session it worked. Aiden Markram and Wiaan Mulder put on 69 for the fifth wicket, almost all of it defence: Mulder needed 110 balls for his 29, and Markram would bat 237 balls for 75.

Hazlewood broke it with a ball angled in towards leg stump. Mulder got a touch and Alex Carey took the catch. Four balls later Renshaw, now turning his arm over as a part-time spinner, had Kyle Verreynne caught at slip by Steve Smith for a duck. South Africa went to lunch six down, still 255 short, with only the tail left to shield Markram.

One over with the second new ball

Then the new ball arrived, and with it the over that showed what all that patience is for. Marco Jansen was the one South African batter trying to hit his way out, 35 off 54 balls. Hazlewood bowled him, the ball clipping off stump; ABC’s live coverage called it a seed. In the same over Simon Harmer got a glove on a brutal delivery and Carey took it. Two wickets, one over, no wasted motion.

Mitchell Starc removed Markram, caught behind once a review confirmed the inside edge, and Hazlewood finished the job himself: a short ball to Anrich Nortje, a catch for Nathan Lyon at short midwicket. South Africa lost their last four wickets for five runs in three overs, and Australia were done before tea.

The summer he lost

The figures carry more weight because of where he has been. Hazlewood was ruled out of the opening Test of last season’s home Ashes with a hamstring injury, then the second, then the rest of the series after an Achilles setback. Injury also kept him out of this year’s T20 World Cup. Australia won that Ashes 4-1 without him, which is the quiet problem for any fast bowler in his mid-thirties: the team showed it could cope.

By August he was back, taking his 300th Test wicket against Bangladesh, the ninth Australian to get there. Durban was the louder answer. At 35 he finished with 6 for 49, the best figures of his Test career, and eight wickets in the match. He took Ryan Rickelton in both innings and trapped David Bedingham lbw for 46 on the fourth day.

Kingsmead has seen this before. When Australia opened a Test tour here in 2018, Hazlewood took the final wicket of a 118-run win. Eight years on: same ground, same last act, with eight more years of miles in his legs.

What it means for the series

This was the first meeting between the sides since South Africa beat Australia in the 2025 World Test Championship final at Lord’s. Temba Bavuma, beaten for the first time as captain, gave the visitors their due: “they showed their experience, they showed their skill.” Coach Shukri Conrad pointed to rust, with South Africa playing their first Test since November and Kagiso Rabada still absent: “I don’t know if it’s alarming, it’s concerning, but I don’t think it’s easy coming off an eight-month break.”

Australia lead the three-Test series 1-0 after a 214-run win built on Renshaw’s 190 and 82: 390 and 314 for six declared against 284 and 206, with South Africa set 421. The second Test, part of the 2025-27 World Test Championship cycle, is in Gqeberha.

South Africa have less than a week to find a way to score off a bowler who has just shown them he can out-wait them. In Durban their plan was to survive him. It lasted until one over of the second new ball.

Tags: cricket, Aiden Markram, Josh Hazlewood, Matt Renshaw, Temba Bavuma