Renshaw reigns over Kingsmead as Australia rediscover Test batting

October 11, 2026 — 5:00am

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Durban: Test tours of South Africa have often produced unexpected events for the Australian public to wake up to.

That was, of course, the way most discovered sandpaper gate in 2018, but there have also been plenty of others. Greg Blewett and Steve Waugh batting all day in Johannesburg in 1997, then Mark Waugh conjuring a Test victory from nowhere in the next game, at what was then Port Elizabeth.

In 2002, South Africa lost 16 wickets inside a day to end a game that seemed to be lasting at least another 24 hours. And 2009 saw the morning herald remarkable twin centuries for Phillip Hughes, also at Kingsmead.

To that roll call can now be added a monumental innings, 190 in all, from Matt Renshaw, with the help of the touring side’s stout-hearted tail. His innings came nearly a decade after his first hundred, as a doughy 20-year-old at the SCG in 2017, and some years beyond a time when he had started to give up on ever raising the bat again.

Australia asked too much of Nic Maddinson. Matt Renshaw showed why

“I never thought I’d be here,” he said. “Once I took a few years out of the team, had an opportunity in 2023 and didn’t take it, you probably think that you’re never going to get this opportunity again. When I hit the ball, I was screaming ‘go, go, go’, and it all just hit me at once.”

A first innings total of 390 and an occupation........

© The Age