Bryce McGain has made the ultimate sacrifice to break into the Australian XI, alas his ball service does not compare favourably with Cameron White’s and he’ll have to wait until Durban for another chance to impress his skipper downstairs.

Asked about the botched head job, Ponting gave the following comments:

Bryce was quite ill up in Potchefstroom and he’s actually gone down again overnight today.

“Quite ill”, hardly glowing praise for the right arm tweaker who by all accounts delivered a long spell on a sticky wicket. Not even going down on Ponting again overnight today was enough to convince the timezone confused captain that Bryce was able to consistently hit good areas, McGain coming up short on several occasions.