South Africa beat Sri Lanka to win first home Test series in 3 years

South Africa beat Sri Lanka to win first home Test series in 3 years

South Africa thumped Sri Lanka by 10 wickets in the final Test of the three match series at the Newlands, Cape Town on Friday, January 6, 2012.

With this victory, the hosts got their first Test series win since 2008. They were criticised for not being able to deliver consistent results in the longest version of the game, but a comprehensive show over the Lankan Lions will silence their critics for
a while.

Despite winning the series, the South Africa captain Graeme Smith will be looking forward to improve the team’s performance. He would have expected a whitewash over a weak Sri Lankan side, but lost the Durban Test by a huge margin of 208 runs.

After losing that game, some of the South African players were critised for being a burden on the team.

Some of the cricket experts believed it was time for legendary all-rounder Jacques Kallis to hang up his boots, as he was unable to deliver in the opening two matches and got the first pair of his career in Durban.

However, Kallis was not willing to give up that easily and bounced back with a tremendous double-century in Cape Town. He ended up being the top scorer of the match with 224 runs, which was his career best.

Other than that, the veteran player bagged three wickets in the second innings and pouched six catches in the match. His performance was more than enough to earn him the man of the match award in his 150th Test.

There were also some spectacular performances from other Proteas players, as Alviro Petersen and AB de Villiers scored centuries in the first innings. The batters were backed by bowlers: Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Imran Tahir, who picked up wickets
on regular intervals in the match.

Despite losing the series, there were some positives for the tourists, as they managed to win their first ever Test since the retirement of Muttiah Muralitharan and Lasith Malinga.

This would have given a lot of confidence to skipper Tillakaratne Dilshan, who might have been stripped of captaincy in case of a whitewash defeat.

Other than that, the return of Thilan Samaraweera also proved to be a plus for the Lankans, as the veteran batsman scored a couple of centuries in the series.

Both teams will now feature in the limited-over leg and will look to entertain the fans worldwide.

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Posted by Waqar Masood on Jan 6 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry