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Scorecard and ball-by-ball detailsMitchell Starc improved greatly in his second spell, finding the perfect length and just enough swing a few minutes before lunch•Getty Images

Though Perth is three hours behind the rest of Australia, the nature of the WACA ground pitch is to encourage a match in fast forward, and so it was again. A dramatically recast Australian team rued Faf du Plessis’ composure for the second time in the space of four days as South Africa scrambled to 225 then snipped the top off Australia’s batting order on day one of the third Test.Twelve wickets fell for 257 runs, but with enough evidence between several rushes of wickets to suggest that batsmen will prosper at some point during the match. Du Plessis’ exemplary, unbeaten 78 was compiled after he came to the wicket amidst the fall of 5 for 14 either side of lunch. It granted South Africa some sort of total to bowl at, enough for Dale Steyn and the fit-again Vernon Philander to nip out Ed Cowan and Shane Watson before the ball had lost its shine.The WACA ground rose mistakenly to laud Ricky Ponting at the fall of Watson’s wicket, but it was the nightwatchman Nathan Lyon who walked out instead. He did Ponting a major good turn in the 37-year-old’s final Test by accompanying a somewhat jumpy David Warner to the close at 2 for 33.Aside from the aforementioned period of frenzy, Australia found breakthroughs difficult to extract on a bouncy but true surface. The Australia bowlers shared the spoils, Mitchell Starc perhaps the pick with a pair of late inswingers to bowl Alviro Petersen and Jacques Kallis in the closing minutes of the morning session. Lyon vindicated his inclusion with 3 for 41, the debutant John Hastings and vice-captain Shane Watson contributed important wickets, while Mitchell Johnson claimed two of his own and intimidated at times with well-directed short balls.Lacking James Pattinson, Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus due to their Adelaide exertions, Starc and Johnson were recalled while Hastings made his debut as the into-the-wind trundler so often favoured at the WACA ground.Having been 12th man in Brisbane and Adelaide, Starc found himself taking the new ball at the start of the Test. There was some early swing for him and Petersen was given out lbw by the umpire Richard Kettleborough when one delivery curled back into the opener’s pads, but a review had the ball passing high and wide of the stumps.That ball was not representative of the opening spells for either Starc nor Hastings, who both erred on the short side to give plenty of sighters to Petersen and Smith. Clarke called on Watson at first change and followed up with Johnson at the other end, and their spells signalled a change in the morning. Watson found a little movement either way and bowled a far better length, rewarded when Smith pushed out at ball going across him and edged to Clarke at slip.

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• Faf du Plessis has become the first batsman to score more than 70 in each of his first three Test innings. The batsman who got nearest to achieving it was Australia’s Herbie Collins, who scored 70, 104 and 64 in his first three. Andrew Strauss was close too, with scores of 112, 83 and 62.

• This is the third successive instance of the team batting first scoring less than 300 in a Perth Test, following India’s 161 earlier this year and Australia’s 268 in the 2010 Ashes.

• Dean Elgar has become the first South Africa top-order batsman (batting in the top 7) to score a duck on Test debut since Gerhardus Liebenberg in 1998.

• In nine Tests when AB de Villiers has played as wicketkeeper, he has an average of 29.23 with a strike rate of 39.62 and one half-century in 15 innings. When he doesn’t keep wicket, he averages 50.42 at a strike rate of 55.01.

• Nathan Lyon’s 3 for 41 are the third-best figures by an Australia spinner in the first innings of a Perth Test, after Bruce Yardley’s 5 for 107 in 1982 and Shane Warne’s 4 for 83 in 1997.

Johnson produced some nasty deliveries to Smith and some compelling ones to Amla, beating the No. 3 for pace and length on more than one occasion. Having been given a firm idea of how to bowl by two more experienced WACA ground exponents, Starc improved greatly in his second spell. A few minutes before lunch he found the perfect length and just enough swing to burst through Petersen’s drive, and in the next over produced a near identical delivery to do the same to Kallis.South Africa thus ended the session in far worse shape than they had seemed likely to for most of its duration. Starc had learned quickly, helped by the examples of Watson and Johnson. On resumption Hastings commenced an excellent spell up-wind, finding useful outswing in addition to sharp bounce.Amla was fortunate when he flicked Hastings straight to midwicket in the first over, Ed Cowan dropping a simple chance, but in the next he was caught somewhat short of the appropriate gear when de Villiers called a quick single – David Warner’s direct hit found Amla short and saved Cowan the blushes. Unnerved by the run-out, de Villiers walked into a delectable, swerving ball from Hastings in the next over and edged to Clarke at slip.Elgar’s first appearance at a Test batting crease was not pretty – Johnson worked him around the crease with a hostile spell – and he completed a 12-ball duck by gloving a short ball tamely to Wade when trying to hook. The first ball Peterson faced was full, fast and far too quick for him, but it narrowly missed off stump.Slowly du Plessis and Peterson regathered somewhat less shaky ground, punching the ball through the field and taking advantage of Perth’s typically quick outfield. De Plessis eluded a concerted lbw appeal and referral by Watson when ball-tracking had the ball missing leg stump, and the pair had caught a glimpse of tea when Lyon was introduced.There was evidence of loop, bounce and turn in Lyon’s first over, and in his third a shortish ball bounced enough to draw a fatal error from Peterson. Philander contributed another nuisance lower-order innings to follow up, however, advancing to loft Lyon into the crowd at wide long on before he skied to Michael Hussey when attempting a repeat. Lyon had moved around the wicket, and was rewarded further when he claimed the last man Morne Morkel, who had clumped a trio of boundaries from the bowling of Johnson after Steyn played on.Left with a little under an hour to bat, Warner flashed absentmindedly at Steyn’s first delivery. His third angled teasingly across Cowan, who pushed at the line in expectation of some swing, but finding none succeeded only in edging to Kallis at slip for a golden duck. Watson late cut his first ball to the fence, but his tendency to plonk the front pad down the pitch was exploited by Philander, who had the plumbest of lbw decisions bizarrely refused by Asad Rauf. The inevitable review set that call right, and left Lyon to bravely protect Ponting until stumps.

Sulieman Benn has moved closer to a return for West Indies after being named in their 30-man preliminary squad for the ICC World Twenty20. Benn has not played for West Indies since last year’s World Cup, a tournament during which the team management was unimpressed by his off-field behaviour, and he lost his central contract later in 2011.However, Benn played for West Indies A last month and has now found himself one of seven spinners in the 30-man group, along with Sunil Narine, Devendra Bishoo, Garey Mathurin, Nikita Miller, Samuel Badree and Shane Shillingford. There were no major surprises in the squad, with all 30 men having played for West Indies in one of the thee formats of the game.Shillingford, Tino Best and Kieran Powell were the only men named in the squad who are yet to make their Twenty20 international debuts. Adrian Barath, Anthony Martin, Derwin Christian and Miles Bascombe were all overlooked, despite having played Twenty20 cricket for West Indies within the past year.The final 15-man squad will be named next month.West Indies squad Samuel Badree, Christopher Barnwell, Carlton Baugh, Sulieman Benn, Tino Best, Devendra Bishoo, Nkrumah Bonner, Carlos Brathwaite, Darren Bravo, Dwayne Bravo, Johnson Charles, Fidel Edwards, Chris Gayle, Danza Hyatt, Garey Mathurin, Nikita Miller, Sunil Narine, Kieron Pollard, Kieran Powell, Denesh Ramdin, Ravi Rampaul, Kemar Roach, Andre Russell, Darren Sammy, Marlon Samuels, Krishmar Santokie, Shane Shillingford, Lendl Simmons, Dwayne Smith, Devon Thomas.

During Australia’s one-day tour of England in June, James Pattinson spoke of the importance of Australia’s new bowling coach being a proven practitioner, a former international player who could teach the young bowlers from personal experience. There was no doubt that Pattinson, and many of his fast-bowling colleagues, enjoyed having Craig McDermott around the group over the previous year and thrived under his guidance.Less than two months later, Cricket Australia has appointed McDermott’s replacement: Ali de Winter, who was the stand-in bowling coach on that England tour. He does not have international playing experience, nor even a great deal of first-class experience – in 21 first-class matches for Tasmania he collected 35 wickets at an average of 50.51. But he is a career coach, a man who has honed his teaching skills over a decade, internationally and in Australia.He is also far from the only international bowling coach to be drawn from the first-class sphere: David Saker (England), Joe Dawes (India) and Damien Wright (New Zealand) did not reach international level and are now in charge of Test attacks. Cricket Australia had no doubts that de Winter was the right man for the job – the Pakistan champion Waqar Younis also applied – but de Winter is aware there will be plenty of people who will take convincing, just as Pattinson had done.”I read that with interest,” de Winter said of Pattinson’s comments. “But to James’ credit he came to me straight away and he wanted to talk through that. To me, that showed a sign of maturity. By the end of the four weeks we were on the same page and we were good mates, we could share information and we had started to build up that trust and he was really supportive of me going forward with the process and he’s really looking forward to working with me now.”I think there will be people who will say that the bowling coach needs to have been there and done it. I’m a career coach, so I don’t necessarily believe that. I’ve got a lot of trust and faith in the experience that I’ve had internationally and here with Cricket Tasmania. I think it will be an issue to some people. I think the pressure will come on if the bowling group don’t start to show that they’re improving. But it doesn’t matter to me. It matters to some.”Pattinson is one member of a very promising group of young Australian fast bowlers who will be working with de Winter on a full-time basis now, along with the likes of Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc. But one of de Winter’s major challenges will be to work with the team’s medical staff to keep the young attack fit, which over the past year has proven harder than expected.Pattinson, 22, picked up an abdominal strain during the England tour and has also had back and foot complaints since making his Test debut in December. Cummins, 19, was sent home from England with a side strain and also suffered a foot injury over the summer, and keeping both young men on the field will be critical to Australia’s plans over the next 12 months leading up to next year’s Ashes.”I think their actions are both pretty sound,” de Winter said. “There’s little bits of tinkering you can do along the way but they’ve got to where they are because their actions are good and they’re able to execute skill. That’s one thing we don’t have to worry about. The focus should be on having them physically fit enough and prepared as best as they can be.”That means maintenance on their strength and their fitness all the way along, as well as getting good treatment and recovery. That’s a difficult thing to balance in such a busy schedule. We need to maybe target bowlers that are better at one form of the game and have them more available for Test cricket if that’s what it is, or one-day cricket if that’s what it is, because in this climate we’re in now it’s very difficult to play all forms, all the time.”We’ve got to find a strategy to make sure that we have less injuries. With such a busy schedule in the next 12 to 18 months I think we need to jump on that pretty quickly. People have talked about rotating the bowlers through at different times and I think that’s worth consideration. But you can only rotate if you’ve got good players to come in.”The national selectors have already shown their hand in that regard by leaving Pattinson out of their Twenty20 plans, but rotation will become more of an issue with a heavy schedule over the next year including the ICC World Twenty20, home Test series against South Africa and Sri Lanka and a Test tour of India ahead of the Ashes, not to mention one-day internationals scattered throughout.De Winter hopes that keeping the bowlers strong will also help them to become more physically intimidating, which is often a key feature of the best attacks. Peter Siddle, Ryan Harris, James Pattinson and Ben Hilfenhaus can display that kind of hostility, but de Winter wants to instil that aggression in the entire bowling group.”There’s a certain amount of aggression in that group,” he said. “That’s only four [bowlers] of maybe a dozen or 15. What I would like to see is that everybody has that mindset of being aggressive and strong and have a physical presence on the ground, which at the moment is what the South Africans are doing and what the English appear to be doing.”Australia’s bowling attack is probably not the most feared in world cricket and for a long, long time we had that aura about our bowling group. I think that’s something we should want to strive to get back to. I think we can change the physical culture in our bowling group and make sure that we’re the strongest and fittest going around. With that comes confidence.”And plenty of people will gain confidence in de Winter if he can achieve that.

Indian foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai has said the resumption of India-Pakistan bilateral cricket ties is dependent on the BCCI and the PCB. Speaking after a meeting with Pakistan foreign secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani on Thursday, Mathai said the joint statement issued by the officials after their meeting emphasised the need for the two countries to engage in sporting activities.”The resumption of cricketing ties, this is a matter between the BCCI and the PCB,” Mathai was quoted as saying by . “As you will see in the joint statement, we have emphasised the need to promote sports between the two countries.”Jilani confirmed that cricket had come up for discussion during the meeting. “I had a discussion on the revival of cricket ties between the two countries,” he said.Bilateral ties between India and Pakistan have been severed since the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. BCCI president N Srinivasan and PCB chief Zaka Ashraf have held several discussions this year regarding resumption of ties, with Pakistan hoping to fit in a series at the end of the year, during the Christmas break in England’s tour of India. After the last of those meetings, on the sidelines of the ICC’s annual conference in June, Ashraf had said Pakistan were ready for progress on the series but Srinivasan said he would only be able to commit after checking with Indian authorities.It is Pakistan’s turn to host a bilateral series between the two. But there has been no international cricket in the country between Full Members since the March 2009 attack on the Sri Lanka team bus and it is understood that India are not keen to play at a neutral venue, as has been the case with all Pakistan’s ‘home’ series since the attack. Subsequently, Ashraf said India had the prerogative to decide on the dates and host the series, but the PCB would want the BCCI to share revenue because the PCB has apparently not yet recovered from the financial loss suffered when India pulled out of their planned tour in 2009.

ScorecardNick Compton got over the disappointed of not reaching 1,000 runs before the end of May by scoring a century•PA Photos

He got there in the end, if a day too late. Denied ultimately by the weather, although typically blaming himself for missed opportunities earlier in the journey, Nick Compton may have failed to reach 1,000 first-class runs before the end of May but has the consolation of becoming the earliest to reach the mark since the man who last achieved it.Compton’s third Championship century of the summer – and his fourth in an almost-historic sequence of 13 first-class innings that also includes a 99 – took him to 1,049 runs for the season. He is the quickest into four figures by date since Graeme Hick completed his 1,000 on the same ground on May 28, 1988. That distinction had been held for the last eight years by Rob Key, the Kent and former England batsman, who passed 1,000 on June 2 in 2004.It had been Compton’s bad luck to be stranded on 9 not out when rain halted play less than an hour after lunch on the second day. He had waited for three hours subsequently, either staring at the covers on the square from the players’ balcony or inquiring with the umpires as to why they were not being removed at moments when it seemed the drizzle had stopped. But to no avail.At the start of the third day, delayed for 35 minutes by more rain, it was as if he had determined that he would at least get there no more than one day in arrears. The core of his batting philosophy these days is never to sell his wicket cheaply but seldom can he have applied it more rigorously.Bizarrely, he scored a boundary off the fifth ball of the day, with something of a loose stroke, by his standards, to a ball from David Lucas outside off stump that he played some way from his body. It would be the last moment of anything that could be remotely likened to indiscretion.The shot took him to 13 not out from 27 balls. He had faced 77 more before his next boundary advanced his score to 25. Even by his own risk-nothing policy, this was extraordinarily cautious stuff, so patient that in one particularly watchful period he saw off 30 deliveries in a row without taking a run.Then, as if he were suddenly sure of the outcome, finally certain beyond any inkling of self-doubt that he had the measure of the situation, he began to identify chances he could take. From 21, he reached 59 – the magic number – in only 36 more balls.It came at around 10 minutes to three – 24 hours later than he would have preferred, for sure but with no sense of failure in his reaction. Having cracked Gareth Andrew for a superb drive through the covers off the back foot, bringing him his 10th boundary to that point, he dabbed the next ball to third man for a comfortable single. As he ran, he celebrated with a clenched fist and a shout of “yes”, then dropped to one knee and pumped his right arm, getting up to embrace his partner, Jos Buttler, and acknowledge the warm applause from the home spectators.Clearly relieved to have the burden of expectation lifted from him, delighted with himself for having maintained his concentration despite the disappointment he had felt the day before, Compton steadied himself, content to play second fiddle again, if not quite so quietly.He and Jos Buttler added 167 in 34 overs for the fifth wicket, enough to banish the possibility, briefly suggested that the Somerset innings might have crumbled when James Hildreth and Craig Kieswetter fell in consecutive balls to Jack Shantry before lunch.Hildreth, whose innings Compton had made to seem freakishly quick, hit 52 off only 76 balls before Shantry pinned him in the crease. Their partnership for the third wicket put on 75 in 25.1 overs, to which Compton contributed 17. It rewarded a spell of tight, disciplined bowling from Shantry and Gareth Andrew. Shantry followed it up with an equally good ball, one that moved away enough to find the edge as Kieswetter reached forward.Buttler matched Hildreth’s aggressive approach, gathering 14 fours, plus a six off Moeen Ali’s offspin. He had an escape, on 23, when Lucas could not hold a return catch but clearly felt he had missed an opportunity when, on 85, he lofted a leg side stroke off the same bowler and was caught by Matt Pardoe at deep midwicket. He whacked the bat against his pad as he walked away.Compton completed his century half an hour after tea, before the second new ball, at the first sight of which Peter Trego gave a catch, well held, to Pardoe at extra cover; his defences beaten at last. It gave a fourth wicket to Shantry, the left-arm seamer, who moved one away a little to beat his upright bat and clip off stump.There was disappointment again, but rather less, one suspected than the evening before, when he realised his sleepless nights had come to nothing. He will not yet sit alongside Bradman and Hammond and Edrich and Grace in the record books but he is a fine batsman regardless of that, worthy of the family name. There is probably not scope, from here, to forge a result in this match but it has been an uplifting occasion, nonetheless.

Worcestershire have confirmed that Saeed Ajmal will not be able to join them for the Friends Life t20 due to international commitments with Pakistan.ESPNcricinfo reported earlier this month that Ajmal would have to pull out of his contract because of Pakistan’s tour of Sri Lanka and that trip is now set to take place between late May and mid-July. The FLt20 tournament begins on June 12 with the group stages finishing on July 8.Ajmal played for Worcestershire last year and was their best bowler in the FLt20. He claimed 16 wickets in eight games, conceding fewer than six runs an over and averaging 11.37 per wicket.Worcestershire’s director of cricket, Steve Rhodes, said: “Losing a player of Saeed’s quality is a big disappointment, however, we are extremely active in finding a replacement for the t20.”Ajmal’s Pakistan team-mate Junaid Khan, the left-arm fast bowler, is still waiting to find out whether he will be given permission to join Lancashire for the second half of the season including the FLt20.