South Africa bowl in Centurion, both teams go with all-pace attacks

Corbin Bosch struck with his very first ball in Test cricket  •  AFP/Getty Images

Lunch Pakistan 88 for 4 (Ghulam 23*, Rizwan 10*, Bosch 2-24, Paterson 2-35) vs South Africa

South Africa did to Pakistan what they always do to Pakistan in Centurion, blitzing them with the ball in the second hour to leave them tottering - this time at 88 for 4 by lunch. Corbin Bosch and Dane Paterson cashed in after a superb opening hour of bowling from Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen, which openers Shan Masood and Saim Ayub rode their luck to survive.

The story of the opening session changed the moment Temba Bavuma through the ball to debutant Bosch. He began with a loosener well outside off stump. Masood, who had been forced to deal with an unerring fourth stump all of the first hour, had his eyes light up as he slashed at it, with a thick outside edge carrying to Jansen at third slip to give Bosch a first-ball wicket.

All of a sudden, the good balls that kept missing edges started to find them. Paterson nipped one away to Ayub, who was uncharacteristically defensive, accumulating a painstaking 14 off 34 balls till that point. It kissed the outside edge, and both openers were back in the pavilion. Paterson wasn't done, because Babar Azam, returning to the side, also had a prod at one well outside off stump, the tentativeness of his stroke revealing his lack of confidence; it was meat and drink for the slips again.

With Pakistani defenses going haywire, Saud Shakeel went for the other extreme, looking to take every ball on, but it was just six deliveries before that strategy ran out of road. He gloved a hook through to the keeper, with South Africa successfully reviewing to send him on his way. It left Kamran Ghulam and Mohammad Rizwan to try to salvage the session, a budding, unbroken, 32-run stand the only consolation Pakistan will take to lunch with them.

It will be all the more frustrating for Pakistan after a magnificent first hour of South African bowling went unrewarded. With Rabada and Jansen nipping it around, it was obvious why Bavuma had opted to put Pakistan in, but somehow, they had gritted out a way to see off the two leading bowlers.

That they had done so felt significant at the time. The next half hour, however, laid bare what a false dawn it was.