Wanderers: Mark Boucher was a conditionally satisfied coach after his team completed a 2-0 Test series thumping of Sri Lanka on Tuesday. South Africa won the second match by 10 wickets inside three days at the Wanderers a week after prevailing by an innings and 45 runs in four days at Centurion.
Led by Faf du Plessis’ 199, they piled up 621 in the first Test. But on Monday nine wickets went down for 84 runs – the eighth time in South Africa’s last 16 innings that they have lost five or more wickets for fewer than 50 runs. Without Dean Elgar’s 127 and Rassie van der Dussen’s 67, and their stand of 184, the second Test would have unfolded radically differently. Neither Centurion nor the Wanderers are easy surfaces for batters to come to terms with, but that can’t be used as an excuse.
Our batters can always keep working, Boucher acknowledged. ‘The techniques were quite solid on tough wickets, but if bowlers got the ball in the right areas it was always going to be tough.
‘[Sri Lanka] got the ball to swing a lot [on Monday], and swing with a bit of bounce is always going to be very friendly to bowlers. Sri Lanka bowled really well to put pressure on us, and that’s why I think we had that collapse.’
South Africa’s pace attack had only a dozen caps between them at Centurion, but their success there – Sri Lanka’s 396 in the first innings is their highest total in South Africa, but they were dismissed for 180 in their second innings – meant they were retained in the unchanged XI named for the Wanderers.