Bad luck leaves us rueful, but can also be a consolation. South Africans regrouping from today's defeat at the MCG will be tempted to mitigate it by reference to some unkind rubs of the green, not least from umpire EddieNicholls.

Luck, though, isn't always the province of blind chance. Consider the "unluckiest" player on either side in this series. In three of his four innings, Boeta Dippenaar has been victimised by the sort of catches that whip Bill Lawry into a frenzy, and are replayed from every angle except beneath the batsman's feet.

In the first innings at Adelaide, it was Ricky Ponting who levitated at gully. In the first innings of this Test, Matt Hayden hurled himself to the right from the same position and telescoped his arm like Inspector Gadget. Today it was Hayden again, this time encamped at short leg, who was the stumbling-block when Dippenaar tried to punch a Warne loosener through midwicket.

On each occasion, Dippenaar has looked stupefied, as though discovering that what had begun as a game of draughts had surreptitiously been changed into a game of chess. In fact, in each case he's been more like the dupe of a hustler with three cups and a ball.

Neither stroke in the first two instances was necessary; on the contrary, both were foolhardy. Dippenaar is a firm straight-driver, but plays with an open blade when the ball is wider, to the extent that he is unable to place or control strokes square of the wicket. In both cases, too, he had been forewarned, after earlier wild slashes sailed just beyond reach. But he proceeded to mistake a slice of luck for a whole cake.

Today, Dippenaar had the whole of the on side in which to place the ball, and could profitably have turned the ball finer. Instead, he struck it straight at the helmeted Hayden, whose quicksilver catch obscured some rather slow learning.

The point is that Steve Waugh's Australians are not only accomplished in their own terms; they also punish error in others more reliably than any other team on the ICC block. Dippenaar might also profit from heeding Hayden's alacrity at short leg. When Dippenaar himself was under the lid during Australia's innings, he stood a metre too deep throughout, and was noticeably on his heels: twice he was too tardy in advancing on chances that Steve Waugh offered early in his innings. That's another aspect of luck. Sometimes you make your own.

Gideon Haigh is one of Australia's leading cricket writers and the author of several books including The Summer Game, the acclaimed history of Australian cricket from 1948 to 1971.

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