South Africa beat Sri Lanka by 109 runs in the second Test. With this, the team has won the two-match series 2-0. Temba Bavuma's team set a target of 348 runs at the St. George's Park Stadium in Kebera, in response to which Sri Lanka managed to score only 238 runs.
With this win, South Africa has overtaken Australia to take the number-1 position in the points table of the World Test Championship. Sri Lanka needed 143 runs on the fifth day. When South Africa needed 5 wickets. But the team could only add 33 runs to their total of 205 runs yesterday and were all out. Keshav Maharaj took 5 wickets from the Proteas team.
Dan Patterson took 7 wickets in the match, adjudged player of the match. Captain Bavuma, who scored 327 runs in 2 matches, got the title of player of the series.
Apart from captain Silva, other batsmen failed except Sri Lankan captain Dhananjay de Silva, the rest of the batsmen were complete flops. Silva played an innings of 50 runs in 92 balls. Wicketkeeper Kusal Mendis scored 46 runs. The last 4 batters together could only add 15 runs. Spinner Keshav Maharaj took 5 wickets in the second innings.
On the fifth day, Keshav sent 3 Sri Lankan batters to the pavilion.
Bavuma scored a fifty On the fourth day, South Africa opened their second innings with a score of 191/3. Tristan Stubbs scored 36 and captain Temba Bavuma led the innings with 48 runs. Bavuma scored a fifty and was dismissed for 66 runs while Stubbs scored 47 runs.
David Bedingham contributed 35 runs. 5 tailenders also played innings of 8 to 14 runs and took the score to 317 runs. South Africa took a 30-run lead in the first innings, leaving Sri Lanka with a target of 348 runs.
Temba Bavuma scored fifties in all four innings of the series.
Jayasuriya's 5 wickets From Sri Lanka, spinner Prabhath Jayasuriya took 5 wickets in the second innings. Vishwa Fernando got 2 wickets while Asitha Fernando and Lahiru Kumara got 1 wicket each. There was a run out.
Bad start for Sri Lanka Chasing the target of 348 runs, the Sri Lankan team got off to a bad start. Dimuth Karunaratne was dismissed for 1 run and Pathum Nisanka for 18 runs. The middle order batsmen took charge of the innings, but 3 batsmen were dismissed after being set. Dinesh Chandimal scored 29, Angelo Mathews scored 32 and Kamindu Mendis scored 35 runs.
Kamindu Mendis could not score a single fifty in the series.
Then captain Dhananjay de Silva took charge of the team along with Kusal Mendis. The duo put on a 50+ run partnership to take the score past 200 runs. The team scored 205 runs at stumps, with both Kusal and Dhananjay returning not out with 39 runs each. For South Africa, Keshav Maharaj and Dan Patterson have taken 2 wickets each. Kagiso Rabada also got a wicket.
Image Credit: (Divya-Bhaskar): Images/graphics belong to (Divya-Bhaskar).