Australia's batting malady comes home to roost

Travel bugs can be enigmatic things. Sometimes an illness seemingly stubborn and debilitating can clear up fairly soon on return to familiar climes, home-cooked meals and friendlier time zones. Others hang around, necessitating visits to the doctor, medication and extra rest - even if the trip away was meant to be a holiday in the first place.

Over two days at home, Australia's cricketers have found themselves with a strong dose of the second variety. The early passages of this Test had suggested that the team's struggles on the road were largely related to foreign conditions and home-ground priorities. But the batting decline that took place at the WACA bore an uncanny resemblance to the way the team went to pieces in Sri Lanka, even though conditions could not possibly have been more different.

More specifically, the way Australia slid from 0 for 158 to 244 all out - after allowing South Africa to wriggle out of an ordinary start on day one - looked more or less a carbon copy of the way things panned out in the team's previous Test, in Colombo. Having been 5 for 26, Sri Lanka made it to 355. In response, Australia slid from 1 for 267 to 379 all out, surrendering their best chance of winning the match in the process.

So much about all this felt familiar. Through Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood, the South Africa batsmen were pushed into early trouble, before a resilient lower order and tail pulled them out of it. Through David Warner and Shaun Marsh, the Australians seemed on course to fly past South Africa's tally, before one wicket begat two, three, four and then a rush through the tail.

What has become apparent is this: Australia are not consistent enough right now to follow through on early good work, nor are they strong enough in middle-order batting to recover from a poor start. On the contrary, not even strong ones seem to be enough. When South Africa pushed back, as the captain Faf du Plessis had pledged they would, Steven Smith's team fell in an unsightly heap.

There is no starker illustration of the worrying lack of depth in the batting line-up than the fact Mitchell Marsh (one Sheffield Shield century in his life) is walking in to bat at No. 6, while a wicketkeeper/batsman of Quinton de Kock's undoubted class must bide his time at No. 7. The Marsh and Peter Nevill duo at six and seven looks the weakest middle-order pairing in an Australian Test side since 1988, in the days before Ian Healy began to redefine the wicketkeeper's batting value for Australia, then Adam Gilchrist and Brad Haddin accelerated it.

Now it isn't as though the Australians are unaware of all this. The selection chairman Rod Marsh had emphasised the need for lower-order runs by pointing out that Jackson Bird had missed out on the squad by dint of his batting rather than bowling, as the former junior batsman and now seamer Joe Mennie was preferred. Equally he singled out Marsh and Nevill as needing to make more runs at the pivot point between batsmen and bowlers.

Before the match, Smith had spoken of the pair: "Those guys have been working really hard, the selectors have said they want Mitch Marsh to come out and score more runs, but I have watched him pretty closely over the last six months and I think he's made a lot of improvement to his game, we've been working on him playing the ball a bit softer in defence, I know if he spends a lot of time in the middle he can score incredibly quickly, he hits the ball as hard as anyone so it is about making sure he is out there long enough to score big runs."

There seems something slightly contradictory about Marsh's commission. On one level he is meant to make the most of his innate power at the crease, yet on the other build his defence in order to play the long innings expected of a No. 6. The result appears now to be a batsman confused, trying to "bat properly" without the technical tools to do so, while at the same time removing the danger to opposition sides that may be created by his potential for rapid scoring.

Nevill, meanwhile, is repeatedly finding himself batting with an increasingly jittery tail, unable to change the momentum of the game with brazen attacks on the bowlers because it simply isn't his style. Alongside Adam Voges, Nevill played decently enough this day, until he was harshly ruled to have been caught off bat and pad at slip - little evidence for contact with the former could be found on replays.

So it was that South Africa found themselves in control of the match despite losing the services of Dale Steyn on the very same day. Painful as that shoulder injury looked, the wider malady in Perth is clearly with the hosts. Like a stubborn travel bug, Australia's batting malady is overstaying its welcome.