When Australia ended Day 1 of the Durban Test at 225/5, there was a rather unanimous feeling at least on social media that South Africa were a touch ahead in the game given that they had seen the back of the towering figure in the Aussie line-up, Steve Smith. Day 2 proved to be a fitting reply to all those critics of Australia out there for they hadn't taken into account what Mitchell Starc could do when truly pumped up.

Buoyed by a solid knock from Mitchell Marsh, Australia made 351 on a sluggish Durban wicket but they still needed to get past a reasonably good-looking South African batting line-up (at least on paper). Starc's very first over and the first over of the innings was a sign of things to come.

He sent down a rip-roaring 145 kmph ball first up to Dean Elgar and another at 152 kmph in the very first over. When Aiden Markram came on strike in the next over, Starc nipped the ball away from the right-hander and beat him on the outside edge. Yet, after a fiery four-over spell of searing pace, Starc had no wickets to show. He was replaced in the attack by Nathan Lyon, who immediately picked up two wickets, but that had always been Australia's plan.

They would use Starc and Pat Cummins in short bursts while Josh Hazlewood and Lyon would shoulder the burden of keeping things quiet from one end. Even then, not even Smith would have imagined the kind of fury that Starc was about to unleash on the South Africans in Durban late in the evening.

He returned to the attack in the 28th over – 20 overs after he had sent down a top-notch opening spell – with South Africa's favourite pair of AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis once again looking threatening. It took the left-arm seamer just two balls to send back the settled South African skipper. Starc came around the stumps – a tactic he has quite often employed to destructive effect on slower surfaces, most memorably in Sri Lanka two years back – and moved the ball away from the right-hander to force a nick to Tim Paine behind the stumps.