AS Morne Morkel, South Africa’s towering fast bowler, peppered Australia’s captain Michael Clarke with an unrelenting bombardment of distinctly fast short-pitched from round the wicket, the crowd at the picturesque Newlands ground in Cape Town for the opening day of the deciding Test of the three match series bayed for more.
On television, Tom Moody, an Australian Test player of the previous era, compared the atmosphere to what it might have been in the Coliseum as the gladiators were pitted against the lions in Roman times.
It was brutal. Clarke took fearsome blows to the body, the forearm and helmet as fielders clustered within sledging distance,
