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In all the niggle of first two Tests, something was missing. Or rather someone. While David Warner and Quinton de Kock and Kagiso Rabada and Steven Smith and even Mitchell Marsh had plenty to say, Dean Elgar had been quiet. For someone who has identified his role as being partly to "irritate the opposition", Elgar was doing anything but, especially with the bat. He had made single-digit scores in three out of four innings, and the 57 he scored in Port Elizabeth was subdued, albeit an important exercise in absorbing pressure. But two days after assuring the media he had actually been "giving it out in all the right measurements", Elgar saved his best dosage of the last six months for today. But it was not as much as South Africa needed. On one of the flatter pitches of the summer, a surface even Elgar was able to find fluency on, South Africa's middle and lower order crumbled against the old ball to all but undo Elgar's efforts. And the "even" is not meant to be an insult. Elgar, like Graeme Smith, like Steven Smith, is not an easy player to watch a lot of the time. His innings are about struggle and survival. They are very seldom about what Elgar called "smoothness", and though this seemed one of the smoother innings he has played, Elgar insisted it was not as free-flowing as it looked. "Smoothness in my batting is never going to be something that I am going to try to achieve. It's always going to look a little… there is a word I want to use but I won't because this goes on TV…" Elgar said. "My fluency was maybe there, I was maybe a little more positive. I was trying to score, which is something that I have done in the past but I haven't done leading up to this series. I was trying to be a bit more positive." Most notably, even though Elgar took the fight to the Australian attack, he did it with a measure of deference, especially against the new ball. Only 15 runs came from his first 53 balls, before he had the gumption drive Josh Hazlewood through mid-on. Elgar showed restraint and resolve in equal measure and was careful not to make the mistakes of the previous two Tests. When Elgar spoke before the match, he was harsh in his self-assessment and called his dismissals "silly" and "stupid", and his handling of Nathan Lyon, who had him caught and bowled twice, "crap". Today, he faced 68 balls from Lyon and scored 24 runs, including his most impressive shot, a shimmy down the track for a six over long-on. "I was very mindful of his threat. He is a quality spinner and I needed to find a way to be better than him. It's a tough challenge when you are facing a good bowler," Elgar said. "It was nice to have one up on him." The victory Elgar believes he has earned over Lyon is not limited to the fact that Elgar survived more than 11 overs of Lyon's bowling but also a catch. Elgar was on 53 when he should have been caught by Lyon at backward point. Perhaps he had a point about the imperfection of the innings, then. He also offered a chance when he edged beyond the reach of Steven Smith at second slip to enter the nineties, where he spent the tea-break. 
What followed after the interval was a beautifully-timed drive through the covers off Mitchell Starc and then a mow through midwicket to bring up his century. As a contrast, those shots showed the artistic and the agricultural side of Elgar and his celebration was as raw as the stroke that took him to three figures.
Elgar found himself almost at square leg as he ran, arms outstretched, open-mouthed, and then almost helmet-butted AB de Villiers. This century meant a lot, because it came after an impressive 2017, in which Elgar finished as the third-highest run-scorer for the year, but a stop-start 2018, with an unbeaten 86 against India and the half-century from a Test ago the only shadows of his previous feats. "I didn't think I had accomplished what I wanted to as a player for the side so it was important for me to try and do it in the first two Tests against Australia. Slowly but surely, I started finding myself again with regards to preparation and becoming the player that I know I am," Elgar said. The batsmen who came in after de Villiers might want to start thinking about the players they know they are, and want to be, too. Elgar's initial assessment that a first-innings score of "380-400" at tea is now out of the question, because his team-mates did exactly what Elgar knew they could not risk doing. "We can't afford to play loose cricket," he said. Though batting was not easy for the incoming batsmen, some of the shot selection, like Quinton de Kock's pull and Keshav Maharaj's gift to extra-cover, was questionable. But at the end of the day, Elgar was never going to be one to slag off his own team-mates and empathised with their undoing. "I know the players in our side are trying their backsides off to contribute," he said. "I am aware of the difficulties of this format. Certain moments in Test cricket can set you up for a few very good days." And on the first day of the third Test, Australia had more of those moments.
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