Proteas made to sweat with the bat against Sri Lanka in rain-shortened first day

27 Nov 2024

South Africa 80 for four (Bavuma 28*, Kumara 2-35) on a rain-interrupted day one.

Only 20.4 overs were bowled in the first day of the opening Test match of the South African cricket summer against Sri Lanka before floodgates opened up in Durban.

The rest of the day’s play was called off, but the two hours of action was enough for the Sri Lankan seamers to nab four South African wickets.

Gloomy overhead conditions and accurate swing bowling by Sri Lanka’s seamers made batting difficult with the toss playing a vital role in the outcome of the first day, with Sri Lanka winning the coin flip and electing to bowl.

Openers Aiden Markram (nine off 11) and Tony de Zorzi (four off nine) nicked off early to leave South Africa scrambling at 14 for the loss of two wickets in the fourth over.

Tristan Stubbs (16 off 38) showed some resilience in the face of penetrative swing bowling before he was the first of Lahiru Kumara’s two wickets.

David Bedingham (four off six) was the other, clean bowled by a ripping inswinger by Kumara that dislodged his off stump out of the ground.

Skipper Temba Bavuma (28 off 47) and Kyle Verreynne (nine off 16) were at the crease fighting for survival against Sri Lanka’s quartet of menacing seamers when the umpires called the players off on the cusp of lunch due to incessant rainfall.

The rain didn’t stop falling after lunch as play was called off for the day.

Struggling batters

Two eye-catching boundaries have almost become a foreshadow of Markram’s demise in recent times. It happened again in the first innings in Kingsmead when he clobbered Asitha Fernando for two boundaries through the off-side square of the wicket off the backfoot in the opening over.

Two overs later he was back in the sheds, edging a back-of-a-length delivery to Angelo Mathews at slip, adding only one more run to his total.

It’s been a stuttering last few months for Markram, having only passed 50 in red ball cricket once in his last eight innings.

Batting coach, Ashwell Prince though, believes runs are around the corner for the batter because of the “positive mentality” he has maintained.

“In his mind he’s quite strong, he’s still quite positive,” Prince said after the day’s play.

“Obviously he’d like to get a score. We saw at the start of the year against India in Cape Town, him getting a hundred.

“Mentally he’s still quite positive. When you’ve had a run of bad form or low scores, it would be nice to arrive here this morning and the sun is shining.

“The fact that they were taking the covers off and overhead [clouds] and drizzle doesn’t help things.”

On the other hand, Bavuma, whose last Test innings was in August, missing out on the tour to Bangladesh through an elbow injury, has looked like a man that was never gone.

He rode his luck at times, dropped at third slip by a difficult low catch offered to Dimuth Karunaratne and caught down the leg-side off a no ball by Kumara, but still looked the most compact of the Proteas batters.

He also took his chances when the Sri Lankan bowlers erred too full in length, striking five fours.

Bavuma’s soft hands also allowed the edges that they did find to drop down instead of carrying to the slips.

“I thought he played really well today for somebody who has been out of the game for a little while,” Prince said about the skipper.

“Under those circumstances, on that pitch, under those conditions, he played really late. He played the ball under his eye, played really well so that was encouraging to see.”

Sound batting

Only 80 runs on the board and four wickets down is usually a sign of a problem with the batting side but Prince believes the techniques of the South African batters are not an issue at this stage.

“As a general rule, our batters have decent techniques so you don’t want to – after every dismissal – think that they have a technical problem,” he explained.

“If you calculate everything. The quality of the bowling, plus the conditions then sometimes those [deliveries] will get you out.

“Quality bowling in bowling friendly conditions and the Sri Lankans were able to pick up four wickets.”

If heavy grey clouds stay away tomorrow, as the weather forecast indicates, South Africa have an opportunity to kick on to a decent first innings score with the flat expected to flatten out.

However, another cluster of early wickets could see Sri Lanka having a bat on the most favourable batting conditions of the match.

“We have six wickets in hand so if the sun shines tomorrow – obviously that first hour is going to be important, as long as we get through that with as little damage as possible – we still have people with the potential to make hundreds coming to the crease,” Prince said. DM

Day two gets under way at 9.30am at Kingsmead on Thursday.

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South Africa

Struggling batters

Sound batting