PRETORIA – At 1.03 pm, a montage was shown on the big screen highlighting a collection of deliveries by the South African bowlers in the first session that had beaten various Sri Lankan batsmen.
Balls were pitched up and moved away and went through to the wicketkeeper, with all the batsmen enticed into playing, but missing the ball. All the South African players stopped, looked up and watched, including the debutant Lutho Sipamla then in the middle of an over. Not he nor any of the other bowlers in this very inexperienced Proteas attack could repeat on a consistent basis what the television montage was displaying.
Up in the commentary box, sat Pollock, Ntini and Philander and you had to wonder how they would fare on this surface.
There was a light grass covering and there was certainly assistance off the surface as the montage had demonstrated, but the South African bowlers couldn’t land nearly enough balls in the right spot to build pressure.
This is not the attack South Africa wanted to play here. Kagiso Rabada is out injured, as is Glenton Stuurman, with a strained quad muscle, that the team’s management say will recover in time for him to be considered for the second Test at the Wanderers starting on January 3. He, based on everything that was said in the build up, would certainly have played here, and given his reputation for maintaining control, might have helped stem the tide.
ALSO READ: Tea report, Day 1: Sri Lanka dominate but lose Dhananjaya de Silva to injury
ALSO READ: Sri Lanka start well in the first test against Proteas
However Stuurman would also have been making a debut, and this South African attack badly needs an experienced hand to lead it. The summer of 2017/18, when Steyn, Morkel, Philander and Rabada bowled together seems so very far away.
There was very little control. But for a brief period in the first session when the two Kusals - Mendis and Perera - got jumpy against Anrich Nortje’s pace, Quinton de Kock, captaining his country for the first time in a Test match, could do little to keep the Sri Lankans in check.
Sipamla, understandably nervous, never settled into anything resembling a consistent line or length. He’s also not played enough cricket since moving to the Lions from Port Elizabeth in the off-season. In fact it’s the same for Lungi Ngidi. Mark Boucher described him coming through a rigorous training session Thursday, but training and playing competitive cricket is very different and Ngidi has not done enough of the latter recently.
Combine all of that with the lack of experience and you have the kind of day where the Sri Lankans knew, a boundary ball was around the corner - they hit 42 of them, with the unfortunate Dhananjaya de Silva and Dasun Shanaka each adding a six as well.
Between them, the five man attack, had played 42 Tests coming into this match - 30 of those belonging to left-arm spinner Keshav Maharaj. The most experienced of the seamers is Nortje, with six Test caps. In its entirety this South African team, according to CSA’s head statistician, Andrew Samson, had the fewest number of wickets of any starting XI going back to a Test against New Zealand in 1995. That bowling unit had 101 wickets between them, while the group playing in this Test had 161, 110 of which belong to Maharaj, while 16 are shared between Dean Elgar and Temba Bavuma.
It took errors by four Sri Lankan batsmen to help the hosts get wickets, while there’s also no accounting for how much more dominant their position would have been had De Silva not picked up an injury while taking a seemingly innocuous single.
De Silva was on 79 when he retired injured, and shared a largely untroubled partnership of 132 for the fourth wicket with Dinesh Chandimal. They had realised that the South Africans would regularly offering scoring opportunities and didn’t even have to be that patient.
Chandimal top scored with 85, and could along with Niroshan Dickwella - who batted maturely in making 49 - claim to have been dismissed by good deliveries, both from Mulder.
But Sri Lanka are ahead in this Test, and the onus is on South Africa’s batting, which has struggled in the last two seasons, to haul the hosts back into the game.
Scorecard
Sri Lanka 340/6 (Dinesh Chandimal 85, Dhananjaya de Silva 79, Wiaan Mulder 3/68, Lungi Ngidi 1/54
IOL Sport