By Brian Thomas
It was one-way traffic with Sri Lanka winning the toss electing to bat and being bundled out for 103 runs with 11 balls still remaining, which does relate to the dominance of the protease against the home team in this format.
The home team made two changes but retained Rajapaksha which proved fruitful. Kushal Perera made 30, Rajapaksha supported the cause with 20, but none of them went on to get something big to get a winning target.
Quinton De Kock proved what a class act with his unbeaten 58, with the golden arm player Aidien Markram stamping his class with an unbeaten 21, and protease made an easy job of it with 9 wickets in hand and 35 balls to spare.
Sri Lankan batsman can take a cue from one of the worlds best wicketkeeper batsman Quiton de Kock. The bad ball was put away, improvisation of the sweep, the reverse sweep is a skill that South African batsmen have executed to perfection in this series so far.
Sri Lankan spinners were not as effective as their counterparts. Shamsi, Markram, Fortuin and Maharaj got more out of this wicket. They bowled it slower, spun the ball viciously, and most importantly bowled in the right areas for Sri Lankans to play the wrong line, get beaten in the air in uncertain terms exposed the weakness in the batting.
Sri Lanka was guilty of aiming too high. Except for Kushal Perera and Charith Asalanka, the rest of the batsmen lacked the ability to milk the bowling and rotate the strike. Quinton showed that talent to a great extent. So learn about Sri Lanka. It’s not about hitting boundary balls. Mahela Jayawardena was a great exponent of the art of playing proper cricketing shots so was Sangakkara in this format. They scored lots of runs not going bang bang.
South Africa certainty looks the better outfit. They took the risk and played with 5 specialist batsmen, it paid off.
Well, we have to do with what we have in this format. The road is long and winding, we lack experience, but not talent. Hasaranga and Dasun Shanaka need to spend extra time in the nets with the batting coach, sadly they have hardly done any justice with their bats so far.
Well played South Africa, another clinical display with both bat and ball. For Sri Lanka, it’s still a learning curve.
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