As it happened Second Test, day three: Play abandoned on day three as South Africa falls to 1-15 chasing 387, Carey makes first Test ton

That’s all we have for you today everyone.

South Africa is chasing 387 to stay in the match while Australia needs nine more wickets to win this match and the series.

Play will resume tomorrow morning at 10am, half an hour earlier than usual, due to the early finish due to rain this evening.

Thanks so much for all the comments and interactions today, please join us again in the morning.

See you again tomorrow. Bye for now.

Australia’s injuries are causing greater concern than their opponents as the inevitability of a first home Test series victory against South Africa in 16 years looms ever larger at the MCG.

Blood spilled from Mitchell Starc’s left index finger after opening the bowling in South Africa’s second innings on the third day of the second Test, while Cameron Green has been ruled out of the next Test in Sydney with a broken finger.

After rain took almost two hours out of the match on Wednesday, South Africa were 1-15 at stumps, still requiring another 371 to make Australia bat a second time.

Despite their enormous lead, Australia dragged Green and Starc out of the casualty ward to bat, with Green finishing unbeaten on 51 from 177 balls and Starc 10 not out from 12 balls.

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Football great Kevin Sheedy’s ruthless call on Alex Carey’s AFL career set in train a chain of events that resulted in the wicketkeeper rewriting the history books with his first Test century and stamping himself as a key member in Australia’s push for world domination.

As a footballer, Carey harboured ambitions of being out on the MCG on grand final day but a landmark moment in the venue’s other storied sporting feature is not a bad consolation prize.

Eleven years after he was cut by Greater Western Sydney for their inaugural AFL season, Carey joined late great Rod Marsh as the only Australian wicketkeeper to reach triple figures in a Boxing Day Test with a chanceless 111.

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Despite the rain, a crowd of 34,318 turned out for today’s play.

That means more than 130,000 fans have attended the opening three days.

The umpires have abandoned play for today due to the rain and bad light.

Play on day four is expected to start at 10am on Thursday with 98 overs to be completed.

David Warner began the day with a question mark against his future. He finished it with an exclamation mark instead, an unbeaten double century against his name, but retired hurt and in an ice bath after cramping up while trying to leap to celebrate the milestone, evoking memories of the late Dean Jones, who ended up in hospital after making 210 in a furnace in Chennai in 1986.

Then Australian coach Bob Simpson called that innings the gutsiest he had seen played by an Australian. Warner’s innings, played in similarly draining conditions, deserves a similar epithet. He will never be everyone’s favourite cricketer, but nor is Gordon Ramsay the world’s most-loved chef. The proofs of their puddings are in the eating.

Warner’s epic was a study in the tempering effect of heat on a cricketer. It came in three forms. The most obvious was meteorological. It was nudging 36 degrees and cloudless at the MCG, and in Bay 13 they were falling like flies (they were brave and foolish flies to have been out there in the first place).

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