Elgar's mixed day

Dean Elgar would have had butterflies doing the tango is his tummy as he walked out to bat. Having bagged a pair in Perth, he had yet to score his first run in Test cricket and although dressing room insiders said he was unperturbed about getting off the mark, it would still have been a relief when he did. Elgar turned the first ball he faced to square leg and jogged through for a single as the Newlands crowd applauded as though he made many more. At the other end, Elgar grinned in response and leaned casually on his bat, as though he had doing nothing more momentous than usual.

Although New Zealand bowled better on the second morning it did not help their cause a huge amount, although there was one telling blow. Doug Bracewell got a ball to kick up off one the much-talked about cracks in the surface and land painfully on AB de Villiers' left hand. Immediately, he pulled his hand away and wrung it but almost as quickly gave the thumbs up with his other hand to indicate nothing serious had been done. He called for assistance at the end of the over though but batted on as confirmation that Bracewell had stirred something but not shaken anyone.

DRS has featured very little in this match but it still managed to make it into the notable events because of how it was applied in the 10th over of the New Zealand innings. Vernon Philander insisted on a review for a caught behind off Kane Williamson, after indicating that he thought the batsman had edged the ball through to AB de Villiers while attempting to leave. Replays showed the ball had passed close to the bat and Hotspot did not pick up anything. Both those made it obvious that there was not enough evidence to over-turn the not-out on-field decision but it took about seven minutes before play was resumed - enough time for the players to have a drink and the DRS dissidents to gather more ammunition on how it negatively affects the game. Moments early, Smith had opted not to review an lbw shout which would have been overturned.

Faf du Plessis is enthusiastic but sometimes a little over the top. When Dean Brownlie defended a Philander delivery to point was one of those times. All du Plessis needed to do was the simple stop and pick up but he decided to attempt an aggressive throw before he had balanced himself properly. One-handed, du Plessis flung the ball to the non-striker's end where neither mid-on nor mid-off were expecting it and it went through to give Brownlie five.

Dale Steyn looked to be struggling to find rhythm in the post-tea session and was starting to get frustrated. Then he sent a snorter through to Brownlie that rose on awkwardly and threatened to hit him in the jugular. Brownlie was on his toes defending off the splice and got an edge to Elgar at gully. Elgar got both his hands to the ball but could not hold on. It was not an overly difficult chance and he seemed to have misjudged it to leave Steyn with no reward from the best ball of the day.

Brownlie was let off again in the next over when he was still on 23. Philander tried the short ball and Brownlie cut to gully where Alviro Petersen could not hold on to the low chance. But as Brownlie was counting his lucky stars, McCullum was given an escape route too. He edged Steyn to second slip to present the toughest of the three chances. Jacques Kallis dived to his right, one-handed but the ball was just out of his grasp.