Record quartet strikes as Cummins and Smith floor South Africa to put Australia in command at Durban

The scoreboard says Australia are 139 runs ahead with ten second-innings wickets standing. The bigger picture says even more. On day three of the first Test in Durban, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon – the only quartet in Test history to walk onto the field together with more than 300 Test wickets each – bowled South Africa out for 284 and tightened Australia's grip on the match.

South Africa resumed at 27 for 1 in reply to Australia's 390, and for much of the first session the morning looked to be the home side's. A nice breeze, a snoozing surface and a bushel of boundaries for Aiden Markram and David Bedingham – the latter hitting three in a row off Starc – suggested a fightback was brewing. But Starc was the one to flip the story, working around the wicket to draw Markram's edge from a big drive on 37, the ball lifting just enough to cause the error, with Matt Renshaw taking the catch at first slip.

Temba Bavuma followed cheaply, reverse-sweeping Lyon after a circumspect 27-ball stay, and Bedingham fell nine short of a half-century when Cummins found extra bounce from a hard length to tease the nick to slip. By the 31st over the scorecard reflected the collective effort: Cummins one for 18, Lyon one for 14, Starc one for 37, Hazlewood one for 35.

The 55-run stand between Wiaan Mulder and Tristan Stubbs briefly threatened to stabilise the innings. Mulder even welcomed part-time spinner Travis Head into the attack with a six and a four first up. But Cummins, playing the middle-overs enforcer as he so often does, clipped both batters in the space of two overs. Mulder shaped at a short ball, only for the attempt to bail out to come too late – frozen in the first half of his shot as the ball lobbed to Cooper Connolly at square leg. Next over, Cummins bounced out Stubbs, the top edge flying to deep square leg where Hazlewood covered good ground for the catch.

Steve Smith's catching was the other story of the innings, taking him back to the top of the Test catching list in his long statistical duel with Joe Root. Of Smith's 223 career catches, 150 have now come from the current bowling quartet, and three of his best on this day were spectacular. For Bedingham's dismissal he dived across from second slip to poach instinctively. When Bavuma shaped for the reverse hit, Smith sidestepped metres early to cut the ball's path. Then, at six down, Kyle Verreynne hit the same shot more sweetly – but Smith moved early again, this time flinging himself full-length to his right for a stunning one-handed catch that even the great slip fielder marked with a victory lap.

Marco Jansen's free swinging was fun but futile, 26 from 20 balls far less useful to his side than Lyon's 27 from 91 the previous day, and when he holed out to Head at mid-off, South Africa were 197 for 8 and staring down a heavy deficit. The tail rallied briefly – Simon Harmer adding 52 with Keshav Maharaj and 35 with Anrich Nortje, even swivel-pulling a Cummins short ball for four and carting Beau Webster for a six and two fours in an over – but Maharaj fell to Starc after a stubborn 34 from 44 balls, chipping to Cummins at mid-off, and Webster eventually burgled the No. 11 to finish the job and preserve the share of wickets.

Australia's big four ended the innings with three wickets for Cummins and two each for Starc, Lyon and Hazlewood, lifting their collective Test tally to a round 1,650 – a number only reachable, as the Guardian noted, "because the age of the players is high enough to allow it." Their 38 Tests as a group blitz the previous record for any frontline bowling quartet, however it is defined.

Briefly, the innings had begun in spectacle: Nic Maddinson, shaking off a 33-ball duck in the first innings, pulled the first ball of Australia's second innings for four, and he and Head rattled along to 33 without loss in 5.4 overs before bad light stopped play. The record chase continues.

Brief scores: Australia 390 (Matt Renshaw 190, Pat Cummins 43; Wiaan Mulder 4-68, Marco Jansen 3-68) and 33/0 lead South Africa 284 (David Bedingham 49, Aiden Markram 37, Simon Harmer 35*; Pat Cummins 3-54, Nathan Lyon 2-58, Josh Hazlewood 2-54, Mitchell Starc 2-63) by 139 runs.