The Proteas finished the fourth day on Monday evening on 244/2 after 80 overs of their second innings, needing a further 302 runs for an improbable victory or the ability to bat out another 90 overs for the safe haven of an honourable draw.
What is absolutely certain, though,is that Ricky Ponting will take the second new ball first thing up on Tuesday morning. His bowlers will be fresh, there may be some early morning cloud or other form of moisture and the two men at the crease, Jacques Kallis and AB de Villiers, will have to take fresh guard and start all over again.
To date the pair have added 166 for the unbroken third wicket after the opening stand of 63 between the makeshift pairing of Neil McKenzie and Hashim Amla had got the home side off to a reasonable start.
“It is going to be an intense opening session,” commented Amla who contributed 43 off 82 balls with eight fours in his first innings as an opening batsman in the five-day format of the game. “The new ball is available straight away and it is going to be a crucial period of the final day. If Jacques and AB can get us through the new ball safely and, if we lose no more than one wicket before lunch, then we will have a good chance of batting out the day.
“We will have to take it hour by hour and session by session and plan our strategy as we go along,” he added.
Kallis gave a chance to Marcus North at first slip off the bowling of Peter Siddle to the first ball he faced but then settled down to contribute an unbeaten 84 off 161 balls with 11 fours. By that stage he had gone past Graeme Pollock's 1 453 runs to be the leading runs scorer for South Africa in Tests against Australia. De Villiers' contribution to date is an unbeaten 68 off 166 balls with seven fours.
Earlier in the day Phillip Hughes converted his second century of the match into a final total of 160 (323 balls, 15x4, 3x6), giving him an aggregate of 275 runs in the match. He might have gone to a double century and thus joined an elite group of six players to achieve a century and a double century in the same Test match but he sacrificed his wicket to the need for quick runs ahead of the declaration.
Makhaya Ntini finally had him caught on the third man boundary by Morne Morkel and by that stage he had contributed more than 52 percent of the total.
It is going to take something pretty special from either Kallis or De Villiers to stop him winning his first man of the match award.
