South Africa captain Temba Bavuma would be delighted after a near-perfect day for the team in all the 3 departments of the game. Sri Lanka require another improbable 413 runs to win the Test match with 2 days left in the match and with only 5 wickets in hand. Temba Bavuma‘s tactics should be commended as earlier he struck his 3rd Test ton and showed great application.
Temba Bavuma & Tristan Stubbs quite smartly play out the morning session
South Africa’s score at the end of Day 2 was 132-3 and they had a lead of 281 runs. The speedster Lahiru Kumara was bowling at sheer pace but Bavuma & Stubbs weren’t troubled by it that much. Dhananjay de Silva wasn’t able to extract a turn from the surface as his ploy of going around the wicket also didn’t pay dividends at all.
South Africa had a spectacular morning session in which they scored 101 runs in 33 overs. Proteas’ score was 233 runs in 72 overs for the los of 3 wickets and the lead was 382. Tristan Stubbs & Temba Bavuma irked Sri Lanka’s bowling unit by playing the waiting game. Both the batters’ were cruising for their ton as the pitch unexpectedly didn’t deteriorate.
Temba Bavuma & Tristan Stubbs smash tons in the afternoon session
The second new ball couldn’t change the fortune for Sri Lanka. Temba Bavuma & Tristan Stubbs started playing the attacking brand of cricket. Tristan Stubbs got to his maiden ton in 183 deliveries. Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) decision to make Tristan Stubbs as a Test batter may have succeeded as the batter also showed promise in the recently concluded Bangladesh Test series.
Temba Bavuma was quite often targeted by the short ball barrage by bowlers. Temba Bavuma made a statement that he is not done yet by amassing 113 runs in 228 balls as he struck 9 fours as many experts believed that Aiden Markram should be the Test captain after the triumph in Bangladesh (*Bavuma was injured for that Test series).
Sri Lanka’s bowlers bowled their hearts out but couldn’t contain the batters & take wickets. Temba Bavuma declared immediately when he got out and set Sri Lanka a target of an unimaginable 516 runs. The visitors’ weren’t quite that expensive with the ball in hand as South Africa had scored 366-5 in 100.3 overs with an economy of 3.64 runs.
Kagiso Rabada & Marco Jansen create another batting collapse for Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka needed Dimuth Karunaratne & Pathum Nissanka to blunt the new ball but that wasn’t easy to do. It looked as if Pathum Nissanka wanted to whack every ball out of the park. South Africa again made sure that they enticed the visitors to play shot of every delivery and that showed results. The openers Karunaratne & Nissanka got out cheaply and Sri Lanka were in a spot of bother at 38-2.
The veteran batters’ Dinesh Chandimal & Angelo Mathews showed temperament and slowly & steadily were building a partnership. This time Marco Jansen had to work a bit hard to take wickets. Sri Lankan fans were able to see some fight from Mathews & Chandimal, both these batters have scored more than 5000 Test runs each.
In the 21st over, Marco Jansen bowled around the wicket to Angelo Mathews which immediately took the batter by surprise and he was trapped lbw and even the DRS couldn’t give a reprieve to Matthews and Sri Lanka’s score was 81-3. Before that dismissal, Jansen had bowled 6 overs an had given 15 runs with 1 maiden over being bowled.
Kamindu Mendis wasn’t able to properly understand the bounce & swing from the surface and Jansen took advantage of it by bowling a bouncer & Kamindu played a upper cut but gave a catch to wicket-keeper Kyle Verreyne. Kamindu got out on 10 runs in 28 balls and struck 1 six. The decision to send nightwatchman Prabath Jayasuriya didn’t work well as Rabada got the better of him. In the last half an hour of the game, Sri Lanka lost 2 wickets and now are in deep trouble at 103-5 in 31 overs.
What lies ahead on Day 4 for South Africa & Sri Lanka
South Africa have a huge upper hand in the Test match. Temba Bavuma most likely would start Day 4 with Rabada & Jansen as the spinner Keshav Maharaj hasn’t got any drift & notable sharp turn from the surface. South Africa are sureshot favorites to win the Test match tomorrow itself given Sri Lankan players are looking a bit dejected.
Sri Lanka needs Dinesh Chandimal (*current score 29 runs in 62 balls) to get a huge score on board like 150 or even more than that & take the game as deep as possible. A good batting performance from skipper Dhananjay de Silva will give immense confidence to the batting line up in 2nd Test match. Sri Lanka still has the services of Kusal Mendis who can play fearless cricket. The morning session will be critical for Sri Lanka and if Sri Lanka loses no wickets and score around 100 runs then they might have a chance.