![\"Daniel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792025172_115_bf4c86786d7aea7377942b26f6887332223e1e92.png\")
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October 15, 2026 \u2014 11:35am<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n No gift articles left<\/p>\n You’ve used all of your gift articles. 3 more will become available on the 1st of every month.<\/p>\n Close<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n Gqeberha: Australia\u2019s celebrations of a 214-run thrashing of South Africa<\/a> in Durban stretched from the Kingsmead dressing room to dinner at the palatial Oyster Box Hotel overlooking the Umhlanga Lighthouse.<\/p>\n Later, some players and staff split off into pockets along the area\u2019s Chartwell Street bar and dining strip, before a nightcap or two at the team hotel further up the hill. Gold Coast captain Noah Anderson was a guest for the week, and the AFL player flew home starry-eyed to Australia on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Many of those celebrations have been captured by the camera crew documenting a fourth season of The Test, the Amazon documentary series<\/a> that has been revived to follow overseas assignments in South Africa, India and England over the next 12 months.<\/p>\n Having lived through three previous seasons, Mitchell Starc and Travis Head remain adamant that neither of them has watched a single complete episode, despite being unable to avoid glimpsing the occasional clip on social media, although they agree that some players are somewhat inclined to ham it up for the crew led by Andre \u201cDoc\u201d Mauger.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s certainly guys that still enjoy playing up to the camera,\u201d Starc says. \u201cThe whole watching it thing, I don\u2019t need to watch. I\u2019m not a great reflector anyway, but I don\u2019t feel the need to then go watch everything back after I\u2019ve just been through a tour or lived it as well.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t watch a lot of cricket anyway. I\u2019m not going to go watch what tour life was like when I was on it. Don\u2019t get me wrong; I think it\u2019s great for the sport lover, the cricket lover, getting insight into a few of our characteristics or how people perform and hold themselves in pressure situations, or what life is like on a cricket tour because it\u2019s not all sunshine and roses.<\/p>\n \u201cBut personally, I don\u2019t feel the need to watch it. And look, I love watching that sort of stuff in terms of whether it be watching QB1, and watching all the AFL inside the change rooms and how the guys go about it, or Hard Knocks or whatever, I love watching that stuff. I just have no interest in watching cricket.\u201d<\/p>\n Starc recalled the first series Mauger documented, a difficult white-ball tour of England in 2018, and how the visibility of the cameras gradually receded.<\/p>\n \u201cI reckon it was definitely weird the first week,\u201d he says. \u201cMaybe at most two weeks was a bit unusual because it was new for everyone, and the change room had been this sort of locked away, sacred place. And all of a sudden, there was a camera there all the time, or there was a GoPro set up.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter that, I think obviously with Andre there, who was well known to a lot of us to start with, I think he had the trust of the group from the get-go, which plays a part in people sort of being comfortable with him around or a camera around, and sort of opening up a bit more.\u201d<\/p>\n For Head, the series have documented his rise from a Test debutant in season one to a genuine matchwinner in season three. Now he is vice captain and a principal gauge of the team\u2019s inner life.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I see them with the bits that I\u2019m in, and then social media, seeing the bits pop up, but they do an incredible job,\u201d Head says. \u201cThey\u2019re out of sight. They\u2019re unseen. They\u2019re out of mind. And we\u2019ve had them obviously a couple of times. So Doc was in there filming the other day, and you don\u2019t even know he\u2019s in the corner.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd you use fruity language, and you\u2019re giving each other shit. Hopefully, some of it doesn\u2019t get through the tape \u2013 you get in trouble for what you say. But I feel like I can be as natural around him as possible and can say what I want, which means it\u2019s good.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, [it\u2019s like] there\u2019s no one in that room.\u201d<\/p>\n One player getting plenty of attention early on this trip was Marnus Labuschagne<\/a>, as he plays Test cricket in the country where he was born.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been giving Marn shit for it being a bit about him and South Africa, and I think he\u2019s trying to hijack the whole series one at the minute,\u201d Head laughs. \u201cHe might be trying to hijack the first four or five episodes, and we just take the piss out, and that\u2019s funny.\u201d<\/p>\n Head notes that there is now some level of unofficial policing of how much some play up to the cameras.<\/p>\n Related Article \u201cI\u2019ve said a few things, looked over, and he\u2019s there, and I didn\u2019t realise,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the important part of it. It\u2019s very natural. We\u2019ve had them before, so no one\u2019s trying too hard.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they do, they get shut down pretty quickly by the boys. So it\u2019s good to have them. I think everyone loves it. I think everyone has enjoyed the doco. I think it gives a good understanding around where the team\u2019s at.<\/p>\n \u201cLike guys like Mitch Marsh, who actually excelled from it, from what people thought he was like to what he actually is like. It drew out a lot, and I think people like that.\u201d<\/p>\n The four-man team on tour work long days of both capturing footage and sending it back to Australia for director Adrian Brown to start to shape it. They certainly do more than the team, which as Head says, is a major reason why the cameras keep being welcomed back \u2013 it\u2019s easier than formal media duty.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it\u2019s as easy as what it is, and we don\u2019t do anything, one guy does all the work,\u201d he says. \u201cWe don\u2019t have to do anything, so that\u2019s fun.\u201d<\/p>\n News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport are sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n No gift articles left<\/p>\n You’ve used all of your gift articles. 3 more will become available on the 1st of every month.<\/p>\n Close![\"Vice](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/b68a7715d6eecbfa1410d9c42447f7fd52e76a6e.jpeg\")
Vice captain Travis Head and captain Pat Cummins during the first Test, with the series being followed by Amazon Prime cameras.Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/702f58d2894d32d6d14ef84a468049386c10664d.jpeg\")
A previous series of The Test, on Amazon Prime.<\/p>\n![\"Dull](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/e1d6f76f13ffe45fbcf3907b5e1527dae006dce1.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Daniel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792025176_851_bf4c86786d7aea7377942b26f6887332223e1e92.png\")
Daniel Brettig<\/a> is The Age’s chief cricket writer and the author of several books on cricket.Connect via X<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"October 15, 2026 \u2014 11:35am Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":928456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-928455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/928456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}