Proteas’ race to World Test Championship final starts with beating ‘red-hot’ Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka batter Kamindu Mendis bats during the second Test against England at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London on 30 August. Photo: Stu Forster/Getty Images

By Keanan Hemmonsbey

24 Nov 2024

Sri Lanka is the only subcontinent side to have won a series in South Africa. The Proteas will need to be at their best to beat them.

South Africa’s home summer opens with a Test match against Sri Lanka in Durban this week that will set the tone for the rest of the season.

A whitewash victory in the two-match series against the subcontinent side will set the Proteas up nicely for their final series of the World Test Championship (WTC) against Pakistan at the end of the year.

South Africa winning all four of their remaining matches will guarantee their spot in the WTC final at Lord’s in June next year, and three wins should also be enough, as long as other results don’t go against them.

But Sri Lanka are no walkovers. They’re currently third on the WTC standings, and winning at least two of their final four matches – with a series against Australia at home scheduled early next year – should be enough to see them in the WTC final for the first time.

“It’s almost like a knockout quarterfinal between us and Sri Lanka,” Proteas coach Shukri Conrad said in the lead-up to the first Test, which starts on 27 November.

“That table is going to be quite a topsy-turvy one over the next couple of months.

“We all understand the magnitude of it but more importantly, we also understand that we need to play really good cricket in order for us to achieve the goal.”

South Africa are on form, coming off a comprehensive 2-0 series win over another subcontinent side, Bangladesh, in Bangladesh last month.

“When we were in Bangladesh, those were the first boxes we needed to tick,” Conrad said.

“Now it becomes the Test match in Durban. We certainly don’t want to be getting ahead of ourselves in any way here. We understand that it’s going to be a tough grind, the entire series against Sri Lanka.”

Tough challenge

South Africa is a happy hunting ground for Sri Lanka. They remain the only subcontinent side to have won a Test series in the country after their 2-0 triumph in 2019 following heroics from the left-handed pair of Kusal Perera and Vishwa Fernando with the bat and ball respectively.

Those two Tests were played in Durban and Gqeberha, where the upcoming pair of matches will be played.

Sri Lanka’s last Test series was a 2-0 thumping of New Zealand in their back yard before the Black Caps headed to India to whitewash the home team 3-0, signalling their quality while also emphasising the standard of cricket Sri Lanka is currently playing.

With the ball, slow left-arm Prabath Jayasuriya is likely to be the biggest threat on the slow surfaces at Kingsmead and St George’s Park. Jayasuriya spun a web around New Zealand’s batters, claiming 18 wickets in two matches.

Proteas Sri Lanka batter Kamindu Mendis bats during the second Test against England at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London on 30 August 2024. (Photo: Stu Forster / Getty Images)

Sri Lanka’s batters have also been red-hot. Young Pathum Nissanka has been consistent in the past few months, but the big threat is Kamindu Mendis, who has had a massive breakout year in the longest format.

Mendis has batted 13 times in his Test career, 12 of which came this year, and in that time he’s racked up more than a thousand runs at an average of 91.27.

Read more: Proteas’ struggle for ‘balance’ and success in white-ball cricket continues outside of World Cups

He’s not a home track bully either. Mendis scored 267 runs and was named player of the series after Sri Lanka’s 2-1 series loss against England in August and September.

The conditions in South Africa will undoubtedly be a new challenge for Mendis and the rest of the young Sri Lankan batters.

To accommodate the time it takes to adapt to the particulars of the country, Sri Lanka sent their batters over to South Africa two weeks early to prepare, and hired former Proteas opener Neil McKenzie as a batting consultant for the tour.

“They’ve sent a crop of players out early as well, so they’re doing some really good preparation,” Conrad said.

“We’re going to have to be on top of our game. They beat England in England, they beat Pakistan. They’re a red- hot side.

“Yes, they might find comfort having won in Durban and Gqeberha before, so I think we’re going to run into a very confident Sri Lanka side, but we certainly know that if we play anything close to our ability we will be right there when it matters.”

Short series

South Africa’s Test side is in a healthy space too. Their only losses in the current WTC cycle have been to India on one of the spiciest decks in modern cricket history at Newlands at the start of the year.

Their other defeats came in the 2-0 series loss to New Zealand, where a second- and third-string side was sent to compete against a full-strength Black Caps side because the back end of the second season of the SA20 clashed with the series.

They won three of their next four matches, with only heavy rain at the start of September in the Port of Spain preventing them from making it a clean sweep against West Indies and Bangladesh.

“It’s an exciting time for our Test side. I didn’t think I’d say that for a long time, but it is a helluva exciting [few] months that [lie] ahead, starting with Durban,” Conrad said.

Unfortunately for South Africa, across all of those matches, as well as their final two upcoming series, the team has only played two-match series.

If they were to make the final of the WTC, they would be the only team to have done it without having played a three-match series in the current WTC cycle.

New Zealand, Sri Lanka, India and Australia – the teams above them – have all played in at least one three-match series.

South Africa are also set to play the fewest number of matches, alongside Bangladesh in the cycle with 12.

With the WTC standings determined by the percentage of wins each team accumulates across the cycle, the two-match series formula has worked in the Proteas’ favour thus far.

Despite this, it’s something Conrad wants to see changing in the future.

“We’ve said forever and a day that we want to play more Test cricket,” he said. “It’s not easy just arranging it offhand…

“[But] we desperately need more content both domestically and internationally.” DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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Tough challenge

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