By The Bug‘s senior cricket writer

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is being blamed for Australia’s humiliating turnaround in fortunes on the third day of the Test against South Africa in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth), with the hosts now a reasonable chance to square the series leading into the third and final match.

I can reveal from what my spies in the Australian locker room told me after play overnight that Pat Cummin’s boys were “just too bloody confident and too cocksure of themselves” as they walked onto the St George’s Park ground in the morning with South Africa struggling at five for 90 odd.

And the reason for their complacency? Several players have told me that at the team hotel meeting before breakfast that morning, the squad had been watching the ABC News Breakfast program on Iview to catch up on news at home and they all heard that Australia was “in the box seat” to win the Test from there on.

“You could almost see the boys’ heads swell on hearing that,” said one off-spin bowler left out of the Test eleven who asked not to be named.

“Then, some began drinking more beer than normal at breakfast on a game day. Boonie would have been proud.

“Even “Cummo” who’s generally pretty well restrained grabbed some oranges and tossed up some slow, harmless, half trackers that ‘Nic Off” (Nic Maddinson) despatched to all corners of the dining room with a breadstick, which he then raised to practice his response to the well-earned maiden Test century he expected to score by, say, mid-afternoon, based on the ABC’s glowing assessment of where things stood.”

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