Kyle Verreynne clobbered bouncer after bouncer after bouncer, crashing six fours and three sixes, on his way to a dynamic third Test century, as South Africa reaped 89 runs for the loss of their last three wickets.
En route to that ton, Verreynne forged a 66-run stand with Kagiso Rabada, a period in which his confidence ballooned, just as Sri Lanka were left utterly frustrated, their short-ball plans going very awry.
In the end, South Africa motored to a total of 358. Rabada contributed 23 of those runs, and Dane Paterson 9. Verreynne, meanwhile, bludgeoned 57 runs off the 50 balls he faced on the second morning, and remained not out on 105 off 133 balls by innings end.
Sri Lanka’s frontline seamers each took a wicket on day two, with Vishwa Fernando having Keshav Maharaj caught at slip, before Asitha Fernando ended Rabada’s innings, and Lahiru Kumara had Paterson holing out. Kumara claimed the innings’ best figures, taking 4 for 79.
It was a triple-boundary over against Asitha that really got Verreynne’s engine roaring. This being the 99th over of the innings, Sri Lanka had long since decided that the second new ball had stopped swinging, and turned almost solely to bouncers and short deliveries to blast the final two wickets out.
They had a deep square leg and a deep midwicket out for Verreynne, but he set himself up for the bouncer by changing his stance to a slightly front-on one, and kept thumping the ball past the deep fielders.
Rabada, who had been shielded from the strike in most overs, but had nevertheless faced more than 30 deliveries now, chipped in with boundaries of his own, some of them fortuitous ones off the edge.
Source: ESPN
--Agencies
