South Africa retained their number one test cricket ranking with an emphatic eight wicket win over the West Indies in the final test at Newlands. The win helped them seal the three match test series, by two games to nil, and in truth it should have been three if rain hadn’t intervened. South Africa were, in fairness, superior in every aspect of the game, as evidenced with their eight wicket win here in Cape Town.
AB de Villiers as he so often is, was the catalyst of the win; he crafted his way to an exceptional first innings score of 148 in South Africa’s 421 that gave them the requisite lead to allow the bowlers to overrun the West Indies in a difficult 2nd innings.
As much as de Villiers’ hundred was the winning of the match, the West Indies second innings was the losing of it. They managed just 215, with batsman carrying on the trend of making starts without converting them into big hundreds. They had eight batsman across the match scoring between 43 and 74 without any going on to the match winning knock that was desperately needed.
That’s easier said than done against Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Vernon Philander and now simon Harmer. The debutant who was featured in our preview earlier in the week, enjoyed a superb start to his test career, taking seven wickets in the match. Steyn also took seven as the two combined for the bulk of the Windies wickets to a fall in a classic fearsome space / pressure building spin option combo.
South Africa’s fourth innings chase was guided by Dean Elgar, who made 60*, with a useful contribution, his second of the match, from Hashim Amla (63 and 38*). Despite some minor weather interruptions, South Africa still had plenty of time to seal the win and with it the series. They’ll be impressed with Harmers first up return in addition to the continued form of du Plessis, Amla, Steyn and de Velliers. They appear to be building nicely towards the World Cup, but the real test of that fact will in the T20’s starting on the 9th January.
West Indies will gladly welcome some of their stars like Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard and Andre Russell. They’ll boost the side’s experience and confidence and hopefully make them more competitive in the shorter formats.
South Africa 421 (de Villiers 148, du Plessis 68, Amla 63) and 124 for 2 (Elgar 60*) beat West Indies 329 (Blackwood 56, Johnson 54, Ramdin 53, Steyn 4-78) and 215 (Samuels 74, Chanderpaul 50, Harmer 4-82) by eight wickets
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