The howling wind that gives Gqeberha one of its alternative names whipped across St George's Park on Wednesday. According to the locals it was a batting wind, so called because it comes from inland and brings drier, more favourable conditions, and when it reaches gale force, as it did later, makes life tough for the bowlers. Australia's batters didn't get the memo.
After Australia had been dismantled for 99 in 42.3 overs - and forced to follow-on, 326 behind, for just the third time since 1988 - Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne had started the long task of reviving hopes of the draw that would keep the series lead intact heading to Cape Town. South Africa were also a bowler down with Anrich Nortje having limped off midway through his fourth over in the first innings.
Labuschagne raised the 100 with a single off first-innings destroyer Marco Jansen, and the stand was worth 92, when he faced Simon Harmer bowling from the Duck Pond End and, for the third time in the series, was deep into the 30s. Four overs earlier he been saved from being lbw against Harmer when the DRS showed the ball missing leg stump by less than 5mm. Was this this moment to spark a revival?
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To the last ball of Harmer's over, Labuschagne skipped down the pitch and looked to launch the offspinner over mid-on. It went a long way up into the buffeting gale and almost hung there as Jansen managed to track back and take a magnificently judged catch. For a moment, Labuschagne stood almost motionless at the non-striker's end then, as he began to drag himself from the crease, let out a roar of anger. After removing his helmet he threw his head back and didn't try to hide his emotions as he walked off.
It meant he had been dismissed twice in the day after edging to slip during the first-innings demise. That fate would also befall Matt Renshaw, who shouldered arms to Kagiso Rabada, and Beau Webster, pinned lbw from round the wicket by Harmer, as Australia slid towards a defeat that could have significant ramifications even though they would still be able to win the series in Cape Town.
There is the well-worn statistic around Labuschagne's century drought which dates back more than three years, but he has now gone 14 innings without even a fifty. Regardless of the outcome of this Test the selectors will again be confronted with the question of whether they must pull the pin on his return to the side.
"For me, the option [for the shot] is there if the ball is in the right area," Australia head coach Andrew McDonald said. "So it is a strength of his, but in that scenario there's probably some shots that players will take back. Did a lot of hard work once again. It feels like I'm on repeat around the amount of 30s that he has got. You would say that's a danger period for him.
"They had a good partnership going and [we were] starting to claw our way back into the game, albeit a long way behind the game from obviously the first innings disappointment. So for me, when you do that hard work, you've got to cash in and unfortunately, that wasn't the case for Marn. He'd be disappointed, we're disappointed, and we find ourselves in this situation."
However, Labuschagne is far from the only one under scrutiny. Nic Maddinson played a pair of poor shots against Rabada, following his first innings drive with a poke outside off, leaving his Test recall on the brink of being ended. Webster, meanwhile, has passed 13 once in his last seven innings since the start of the Bangladesh series. Even Alex Carey, who has plenty of credits in the bank, has a top score of 30 in his last 10 knocks and fell to a loose push against Jansen as no one could arrest the slide.
Australia played superbly in Durban last week but remain a vulnerable batting side. Two things can be true at the same time. Renshaw had the game of his life at Kingsmead with 272 runs but no one else passed fifty. In the second innings that could be partly put down to the aggressive way they played to set up the game, but in the first the warning signs had been there when they were 124 for 6.
By the time he limped off in the first innings, Nortje had already removed Labuschagne, courtesy of a stunning catch at third slip by Harmer, to follow Jansen trapping Head lbw with an excellent delivery which nipped back, although the initial appeal had been very muted with Jansen the least interested. Australia were 45 for 4 but unlike South Africa, who hauled themselves from 40 for 4 and 110 for 6 to the heights of 425, there was no recovery. On SEN Radio, former South Africa seamer Vernon Philander termed it a "pretty gutless" batting performance.
Steven Smith, who was battling a neck problem which forced him down the order in the second innings, finished as the top-scorer with 28, during which he reached 11,000 Test runs. It was an innings which, understandably, lacked fluency but included an absorbing duel with his old nemesis Rabada which brought each players' character traits into full view: the feistiness, with a hint of anger of Rabada, and the full range of mannerisms from Smith who batted in the anti-glare eye strips he previously used under floodlights but not in a day game.
Smith faced 22 balls from Rabada, edging one of them inches in front of second slip, straight after which he called for treatment on his neck, and played another wild drive when the ball swung past his bat. There were some words between the pair but nothing crossed the line. More broadly, there was an increase in chirp from South Africa compared to Durban, perhaps emboldened by the return of their talisman, Rabada, although Jansen himself wasn't shy, particularly when dismissing Renshaw. In the end, Smith's dismissal came against a nip-backer from Wiaan Mulder but by then the innings was in freefall.
Smith will be able to bat on the final day, but it will need a herculean effort to haul Australia out of the hole they find themselves in. As the light faded, the same two batters who were at the crease the previous evening, Head and double nightwatcher Scott Boland, were again holding fort. So much had happened in between times there's a chance that, eight years on, Australia may have again seen another series blown off course at this famous ground.