The tourists were bowled out for 99 on Wednesday after a clinical display of bowling from Marco Jansen and the Proteas bowling unit, and in the process allowing the home side to enforce the follow-on.
McDonald said the visitors had put themselves in a difficult position through poor shot selection, while also giving credit to a Proteas attack led by Marco Jansen.
“You saw what we saw,” McDonald said. “If the ball’s in the right area, it is a strength, but in that scenario there’s probably some shots that players wouldn’t take back.”
Marnus Labuschagne was again a topic of discussion when the coach was asked about his number three batter.
His highest score in his last 10 innings is 48 in Test whites, while he scored 14 or less on four occasions during the same period stretching back to the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne in December last year, while his last half century came in November of the same year. .
McDonald said he had again done the hard work without converting his start, a pattern that has become a growing frustration.
“It feels like I’m on repeat around the amount of 30s that he has got,” McDonald said. “When you do that hard work, you’ve got to cash in and unfortunately that wasn’t to be the case for Marn.”
Australia’s first innings was their most damaging passage of the match, with South Africa capitalizing on the momentum to bowl the visitors out in just 42.3 overs.
“We are better than that, but as it sits right now, I can’t defend that,” he said. “There were some bad errors there. But I think we are better than that.”
The Australian coach also rejected the idea that the batting collapse was simply a product of the conditions, saying the surface had offered enough for a capable batting unit to succeed.
