JOHANNESBURG, Feb 25: South Africa’s record defeat against Australia in the first Test dominated the front page of most of the country’s daily newspapers Monday.

The Afrikaans daily Beeld carried the front page headline, “Long knives are out”.

The report quoted Australia captain Steve Waugh as saying, “They (South Africa) could not handle the pressure we put on them, and I doubt whether they will be able to fight back. We have a big hold on them.”

“I wish we could have surpassed that,” the report quoted Waugh as saying. “We wanted to hit them even harder. It gives you great pleasure that a side everybody was saying would be the one to dethrone us crumbled so easily.”

Johannesburg daily The Star also ran the defeat as its front page lead under the headline, “SA hopelessly stumped”.

The back page headline read “South Africa’s ultimate humiliation” above a sub-headline declaring, “Selectors, management have a lot to answer for”.

The paper said: “Defeat could have been predicted as early as Monday when the selectors named 10 of the players who suffered a 10-wicket defeat against Australia in Sydney at the beginning of the year.

“On that occasion, Waugh’s side won in four days. This time they needed just three.”

A column by The Star’s chief sportswriter, Kevin McCallum, declared that “The best XI we could muster were like lambs to the slaughter”.

The back page of the Cape Times also called for the introduction of younger players in the team under the headline, “Woeful SA need a batch of young guns”.

On its front page the Citizen described the match as “The mother of all defeats” while the back page carried the headline “Black day for SA cricket”.

The Pretoria News ran the headline “Big defeat no disgrace”, echoing the opinion of South African stand-in captain Mark Boucher that losing to the best Test side in the game was no disgrace.—Reuters