How the brutal day four Test careers ended sowed seeds of Australia’s destruction — Gerard Whateley column

South Africa has a habit of this. Knocking Australia off its axis. Inflicting wounds and inducing uncertainty.

It might be the cornerstone of the rivalry. The eternal squabble for the mantle of the alpha.

The Ashes has the motherland/colony dynamic. India an evolving geopolitical overlay. New Zealand and the eternal inferiority complex.

South Africa and Australia are cricket’s Cane and Abel. Drawn from similar sporting cultures, defined by matching characteristics and primal in their need to compete and prevail.

It seems forever a game of trumps and one-upmanship.

You win a series on our shores, we win a series on yours.

We bowl you out for 96, you bowl us out for 47.

We thrash you in Durban, you trounce us in Gqeberha.

Worthy foes not easily bowed.

Losing Test matches heavily from time to time is the price of doing business.

South Africa has a way, though, of leaving Australia bruised and dizzy in such circumstances.

Hobart 2016 and the great Australian batting crisis. Bowled out for 85 in 32.5 overs en route to an innings and 80 run defeat.

The Cricket Australia hierarchy entered the change rooms after that chastening defeat. It set off a chain reaction that exploded in Cape Town two years later.

In reaction to the events at Bellerive, Rod Marsh resigned as chairman of selectors. The adjusted panel culled ruthlessly. Five changes were ordered. It would have been six bar for injury. The wrath was felt by three batters, the wicket keeper and a bowler. Four of those would not be picked again.

Australia went to Adelaide in the grip of national emergency. And won. Handsomely.

But on the implied orders that winning was non-negotiable, the team lost it bearings. By the tour of South Africa, it won callously in Durban but triggered AB DeVilliers who vowed “we will not be embarrassed in our own country”.

And it all unraveled in Cape Town.

Inevitably, inexorably we return to the city on the Cape for ultimate determination.

Australia has just been bowled out for 99 in 42.3 overs en route to an innings defeat, sparking a renewed state of batting disaster.

Having registered one its finest overseas victories one week, Australia was abject and without alibi the next.

Losing a Test match that forfeited more than 150 overs to rain and offered the team 20 wickets to navigate two days of play was well worthy of the scathing reviews.

Well declared fault lines return all eyes to selection in search of a suitable formula.

There won’t be the extreme of five changes but there must be some to resolve exposed weaknesses.

Chris Fagan has taught us not to catastrophise losses. Sonny Hayes has told us hope is not a strategy. Between those two philosophies is the path to picking the team to win this one Test match.

Against the spectacular surrounds of Table Mountain there are all manner of metaphors of cliffs edges, but the lone responsibility this week is to prevail on the first stop in this Test Odyssey. It’s no good planning for Scylla and Charybdis if you’ve been munched by the Cyclops.

Only Steve Smith and Nathan Lyon know the feeling of series triumph in South Africa. Few will get another chance.

There are few perfect teams in modern sport. You lean on your strengths to see you through. You need your stars to perform. And you must dull the weapons of serious threat in your opposition.

How to tame Kagiso Rabada? How to dent Marco Jansen? How to curb Temba Bavuma? How to match the spirit and fight in this Proteas team?

The scenario could not be more enticing. That rare moment when a series distills to such a climax. One-all and the duals and storylines teased out. Different to the single Test run-off for the World Test Championship and more appropriate to determine superiority.

Pat Cummins’ men stand this chance at Newlands - to avenge and redeem events of the past, to sieze the first trophy in this epic quest, and to claim the mantle of alpha in this complex and fascinating rivalry.

Gerard Whateley is writing for Fox Sports during the South African Tour and leads the SEN Radio Broadcast of the Test matches