I’ve come around on the timing of Ricky’s aggressive declaration. I’m all for dangling the carrot in front of the Saffas, giving them a slight hope that they might make it, and see it as a good thing to challenge the opposition and with the potential for showers this afternoon we need the time to bowl them out. Of course what hurts this theory is the past two matches which they’ve won from worse positions than they now find themselves, things were so much easier when they choked on demand.

Our chase tactics yesterday worked very well, one batsman grafting and the other dominating. Katich played a superb knock and ensured there was no batting collapse while Hayden and Ponting rocketed along at close to a run a ball.

Then Ponting got out and the wheels came off. Michael Hussey joined Simon Katich and we had two grafters happy to leave the short and wide balls in the pursuit of a big total. Had Ponting shown some flexibility and identified roles for his batsmen, Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin or Mitchell Johnson would have been the next man in and we’d have a further 50 runs in the bank.

I’m really missing the pre-declaration slog, we’ve got the cattle in our squad and to declare without giving Haddin or Johnson a swing makes no sense to me. Perhaps it’s bought about through denial of Hussey’s form?

This would have pushed their required run rate closer to 3.75, a considerable lift from 3.30. Plus we’d have handed them the opportunity to chase the highest 4th innings total of all time to go with the ODI record we gave them in Joburg.

Either way, if this had stuck we’d be sitting a lot happier

9.4 Siddle to Amla, 2 runs, Haddin’s dropped him! Thats a good delivery from Siddle, pitching and straightening off a length, Amla pushes at it off the back foot and gets a healthy edge but Haddin, diving low to his right, fluffs the take, tough though it was