Aussies' secret weapon

Australia's most valuable weapon in their imminent Test series against South Africa will not be explosive batting, destructive bowling or brilliant fielding.

In fact, it will not be seen on the field when hostilities begin at the Gabba on Friday.

Instead, Australia's potential weapon of mass destruction is the knowledge about their counterparts that they will take across the boundary - information that could be said to come from within the sanctuary of the Proteas' dressing room.

Australia coach Mickey Arthur is an important repository of that intelligence, having held the South African reins from 2005 to 2010.

And he has no qualms about using his inside information against his former charges.

"I know the [South African] guys personally," Arthur said yesterday. "I know exactly what makes them tick. I've seen them prepare and train and I know what their thought processes are. I'm not going to influence massively what happens out in the middle. That's between the players.

"But what I do bring is an intimate knowledge of the South African team. I know the little idiosyncrasies of each of them. Whether that can be used to win a Test series, I'm not sure.

"But I'll certainly be giving a lot of the information to our players."

The gap between what Arthur already knows and what South Africa have yet to learn was illustrated when Gary Kirsten said his team was "trying to get information from everywhere we can" about the Gabba, where South Africa last played a Test in 1963.

Kirsten spoke in the wake of South Africa's drawn tour match against Australia A at the weekend, which was played on a Sydney Cricket Ground pitch that had less life than a cadaver. The surface at the Gabba, by contrast, is expected to challenge the batsmen.

Kirsten wouldn't concede that the Aussies had succeeded in what seemed to be attempts to put South Africa off the scent about the conditions they can expect in Brisbane.

"Any preparation for a game is good," he said. "It pulls a team together and allows us to work specifically on what we need to do.

"You don't always get ideal conditions but you still need to take positives out of them. The week we had in Sydney has been crucial to our preparation."