05:47
‘Maharaj could be key in this series’ – Graeme Smith
Toss Australia chose to bat v South Africa
Live scorecard and ball-by-ball details
Steven Smith won the toss and Australia will bat first in the opening Test of the series against South Africa in Durban.
South Africa opted for a seventh batsman, with Theunis de Bruyn included for the fourth Test of his career. Captain Faf du Plessis said the nature of the Kingsmead surface meant that spin would play a role, which opened up space in the line-up for the extra batsman.
“Kesh [Maharaj] is a guy that can bowl lots and lots and lots of overs, so he takes that workload that an extra bowler would, and then your seamers operate from the other side,” du Plessis said. “We just felt, especially against this Australian bowling line-up, we’re going to need a nice solid batting line-up against them.”
Australia named their team on the eve of the match and there were no late surprises, with no changes from the XI that defeated England in the final Test of the Ashes in Sydney in January.
South Africa: 1 Dean Elgar, 2 Aiden Markram, 3 Hashim Amla, 4 AB de Villiers, 5 Faf du Plessis (capt), 6 Quinton de Kock (wk), 7 Theunis de Bruyn, 8 Vernon Philander, 9 Keshav Maharaj, 10 Kagiso Rabada, 11 Morne Morkel.
Australia: 1 Cameron Bancroft, 2 David Warner, 3 Usman Khawaja, 4 Steven Smith (capt), 5 Shaun Marsh, 6 Mitchell Marsh, 7 Tim Paine (wk), 8 Mitchell Starc, 9 Pat Cummins, 10 Josh Hazlewood, 11 Nathan Lyon.
Brydon Coverdale is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo @brydoncoverdale
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo