All posts by csb10.top

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
Evin Lewis hit the highest score in a T20I chase•AFP

Evin Lewis in his second-last T20I against India: 100 off 49. Evin Lewis in the whole ODI series against India: 67 off 121. Evin Lewis back in this T20I against India: 125 not out off 62 balls, including 12 disdainful sixes. Despite just 54 off 49 coming from the other end, Lewis carried world champions West Indies through in a chase of 191, which they finished with nine balls to spare. His innings was the highest score in a T20I chase.It should have been a bigger chase after the start India got – 64 for the opening stand between Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan in 5.3 overs – but India couldn’t find a finishing kick with Rishabh Pant getting stuck for a slow innings of 38 off 35. India didn’t help their cause as they dropped Lewis on 46 and 55.India’s thrust against West Indies’ rustExpectedly West Indies put India in after winning the toss, and expectedly India laid out the big guns upfront. West Indies made the errors up front. Their opening bowlers, Samuel Badree and Jerome Taylor, haven’t played much cricket of late, and it showed. Badree is a highly successful T20 bowler because of the hard lengths he bowls: neither drivable nor pullable or cuttable. Here, though, he bowled too short, and both the openers tucked in, taking three fours in the first over. Taylor started too straight with fine leg up, and he too went for three fours in his first over. India’s 50 came up in the fifth over.“In my pocket”Kesrick Williams already has one big Indian scalp to his name, that of MS Dhoni in the tense win in the ODI in Antigua. Here he began India’s slowdown even though Kohli hit him for six and four off the first two balls of the sixth over. His deceptive slower ball, which even Dhoni failed to pick, drew the catch from Kohli’s bat, and then came out his celebration. He stopped mid-pitch, pulled out an imaginary notebook from his pocket, flipped its imaginary pages, plucked one of those out, folded it and kept it in his pocket.More celebrations were in store as two balls later, he saw Dhawan half way up the wicket with nowhere to go. Williams took aim and knocked back the stumps at the non-striker’s end. India were now 66 for 2 in six overs.India’s bowlers did not have a good day at all•AFP

Pant struggles in the middleNo other young talent has had seasoned observers of Indian cricket as excited in recent times as Pant. India delayed his introduction into ODI cricket to after Champions Trophy, but even during the ODIs in the West Indies, he was not given a chance. With every passing game, fans got frustrated. Finally when Pant got his chance – in this one-off T20I – he found himself a little like a deer in the headlights. The start was inauspicious enough: the first ball he faced, he nudged to leg, set off for a run, and a couple of strides in realised Williams had been quick to reach the ball. Dhawan gone.Then even as Dinesh Karthik, playing his first T20I in seven years, found a way to bat fluently against West Indies’ spinners, Pant just couldn’t find a way to break free. He tried big hits against both spin and pace, but he could neither hit out nor get out. He endured a blow on the shoulder too. This innings was reminiscent of how a young Ravindra Jadeja struggled when promoted in a World T20 innings in England in 2009.Once Karthik gave up his stumps once too often and was bowled behind his legs, India were up against it with a suspect lower-middle order to follow. India 151 for 3 in the 16th over.Taylor stitches India upThe veteran Taylor came back to shut India out. He got Dhoni – on whom the onus rested now – with a cleverly disguised slower ball, and poor Pant tried a desperate reverse ramp next ball. Jadeja denied Taylor the hat-trick, but West Indies had caused enough damage to deny India any momentum in the second half of the innings. Only four boundaries came in the last six overs.The Lewis showOn a flat pitch with no assistance for bowlers, Lewis unleashed some majestic hitting. He kept his head down and kept swinging at those balls pitched in his swinging arc. No bowler survived his merciless hitting. There was a certain disdain to how he kept clearing fields. It was a slightly high-risk innings, which meant there were chances created. The first one was off the bowling of Bhuvneshwar Kumar. On a blustery day with loud vuvuzelas in the stand, India either forgot calling or failed to hear the calling. Mohammed Shami came in the way of Kohli who had run in from long-off, and forced a drop. In the next over, three men converged towards Karthik at long-off; once it was established that it was his catch, he failed to adjust to the late swirl. To make matters worse, Dhoni had earlier missed a stumping.Lewis then went back to hitting sixes and decimating the Indian attack, which never looked like defending 190.

Arjun Mutreja’s unbeaten 101 capped Singapore‘s dramatic seven-wicket win over USA on Friday. Mutreja shared in an unbroken 162-run fourth-wicket stand with captain Chetan Suryawanshi to carry Singapore to victory with 26 balls to spare. It was Singapore’s joint second-best partnership in the World Cricket League behind the 209 put on by Mutreja and Anish Paraam against Bermuda in 2014. Mutreja had scored a century then too.Singapore had lost the toss and spent the first 16 overs watching USA captain Steven Taylor seize on the short boundaries at Lugogo Stadium. He raced to 50 off 37 balls and his team was sitting pretty on 100 for 3 after 16 overs. But USA stuttered after Taylor’s departure for 69, adding only 137 in their last 31 overs before being bowled out.USA were also upset at a series of umpiring decisions that went against them along the way, two in particular which had a key impact on the match. At 169 for 5, allrounder Timroy Allen was in the middle of a counterattack. He had struck three sixes in seven balls, but was given out lbw for 24 by Rockie D’Mello even though the ball seemed to be going well down the leg side. The three balls that followed to new batsman Timil Patel all went down the leg side called as wides.Then, with USA nine down, Elmore Hutchinson began accelerating. He cleared the boundary three times in six balls and, while looking to keep strike, he took a single off the penultimate ball of the 46th over. No. 11 Ali Khan came on strike and he was ruled lbw by Viswanadan Kalidas despite as massive inside edge.Singapore’s task was relatively straightforward. They did stutter, as a score of 31 for 2 in the eighth over suggests, but they recovered handsomely, helped by lack of scoreboard pressure. The closest USA came to separating Mutreja and Suryawanshi was when the score was 117 for 3. Mutreja, on 29, pulled legspinner Timil Patel to mid-on and Nosthush Kenjige, diving forward got both hands to the ball but it popped out when his elbows hit the turf.Mutreja was methodical. Despite coming to the crease in the eighth over, he raised his fifty off 85 balls only in the 37th. He motored from there on though, taking only 33 balls to double up and record the first century of the tournament. He could play at his own pace with Suryawanshi at the other end keeping up with the required rate during his innings of 74 off 75 balls.Arjun Mutreja raises his bat after scoring the first century of the tournament•Peter Della Penna

The race for promotion burst open with Canada beaten by the previously winless Malaysia at Entebbe. Despite coming into the match with two victories, Canada were bowled out for 141, failing to adapt on their first match at the tournament’s largest ground. Malaysia’s spinners took six of the 10 wickets, with the biggest blow delivered by left-armer Virandeep Singh. He toppled Rizwan Cheema, the leading run-scorer at the start of the game, for 6. A small target was just what Malaysia captain Ahmad Faiz needed to recover from being run out for 2 in his last game. His unbeaten 49 on Friday included the winning boundary as well.Oman defeated Uganda by six wickets at Kyambogo Oval to keep pace with Canada and Singapore in a three-way tie for first.Uganda won the toss and elected to bat, but only managed 144 in 46.3 overs with only three batsmen making double-digit scores; Roger Mukasa made 57. Left-arm seamer Bilal Khan took 3 for 28 while Zeeshan Maqsood’s part-time spin proved handy on a turning track, finishing with 3 for 34 in 10 overs. Aqib Ilyas cleaned up the tail with 2 for 5 in 7.3 overs.Playing his first game of the tournament, Jatinder Singh top-scored with 58 off 71 balls, including 11 boundaries, before he was run-out with 36 needed to win. Naseem Khushi and Ajay Lalcheta knocked off the remaining runs with 27 overs to spare to boost Oman’s net run rate.Singapore and Oman will meet on Saturday at Entebbe with the winner likely to take one of the two available promotion berths. USA take on Canada in a must-win match to keep their promotion hopes alive. And Uganda face Malaysia at Lugogo with the loser almost certain to be relegated, and the winner hopeful of an outside chance at promotion.

ScorecardSamit Patel ensured Nottinghamshire’s chase had few alarms•Getty Images

Nottinghamshire boosted their hopes of qualifying for the knock-out stages of the Royal London Cup with a six-wicket victory over Leicestershire at Welbeck.James Pattinson took 4 for 42 as Leicestershire were bundled out for 217 in only 43.5 overs, after being asked to bat first.Mark Cosgrove, with 80, played the only innings of any substance for the visitors but when he fell the visitors lost their way and slipped from 179 for 4 to 194 for 9.Samit Patel gave the run chase a timely boost by speeding to 79 from 60 balls and it was left to a fourth wicket stand of 80 between Brendan Taylor and Steven Mullaney, who both made half centuries, to take Notts to the finishing line.In cold, blustery conditions Cosgrove arrived at the crease in the seventh over of the morning after Luke Fletcher and Harry Gurney had reduced the visitors to 18 for 2.Cameron Delport was denied a couple of early boundaries when two straight drives both crashed into the stumps at the non-striker’s end. His luck appeared to be changing when he top-edged a delivery from Gurney high over third man for the only six of the innings.He’d only made 8 when he nicked behind, one of three catches for Chris Read. Mark Pettini made 39, sharing in a third wicket stand of 65 with Cosgrove, before becoming Pattinson’s first wicket.The Australian then spent most of the next hour trying to keep warm on the boundary edge before returning to blow the middle and lower order apart with three wickets in four balls.Both Lewis Hill, who made a breezy 30, and Rob Sayer, who fell first ball, were sent on their way after bellowed lbw appeals. Tom Wells was then yorked for just 3.Pattinson also thudded a thunderbolt onto the boot of Zak Chappell, who was still hobbling when he tamely fell to Gurney at the other end.Cosgrove, who is yet to score a one-day hundred in England, seemed about to correct that anomaly but was undone by Gurney and ballooned the ball up to Patel in the covers.Gurney finished with 3 for 29 and Stuart Broad claimed 2 for 48, which included the final wicket to fall, that of skipper Clint McKay, bowled for 14.Nottinghamshire’s innings got off to the worst possible start as Chappell trapped Michael Lumb lbw first ball. Patel made the most of his early arrival in the middle to race to an impressive 50, which included 10 boundaries in only 30 balls.Riki Wessels, with scores of 85 not out and 114 in the last two years at Welbeck, only made 20 before nicking Tom Wells behind but the home side overcame his loss with another punishing stand.Patel and Taylor put on 58 in only 10 overs to take the game completely away from Leicestershire. Patel, who had hit 14 fours in his punishing innings, tossed away the chance of a century by hitting Chappell out to Jamie Sykes, the substitute fielder, on the point boundary.Mullaney hit both Wells and Aadil Ali for sixes as he raced to his second fifty in consecutive matches, getting there from only 42 deliveries but he fell to his next ball, hoisting Aadil Ali out to deep midwicket.Taylor’s own 50 had come from 72 balls faced and he was unbeaten on 51 as Billy Root stroked the winning run with 70 balls remaining.The win moves Nottinghamshire on to six points and enables them to leap-frog Leicestershire into third place in the North Group.

New Zealand captain Kane Williamson, Sri Lanka fast bowler Lasith Malinga and South Africa allrounder Chris Morris have been signed up as marquee players in the Caribbean Premier League, a day before the draft. The tournament is scheduled to run from August 1 to September 9.Williamson and Morris are set for their maiden CPL season, having been recruited by Barbados Tridents and St Kitts and Nevis Patriots respectively. Malinga will be part of the St. Lucia Stars (formerly St. Lucia Zouks) set-up in the upcoming season, having previously represented Guyana Amazon Warriors.Martin Guptill, Brendon McCullum, and Kumar Sangakkara, meanwhile, have been retained by Guyana, Trinbago Knight Riders, and Jamaica Tallawahs respectively. Chris Gayle, who led Tallawahs to the title in 2016, will now play for the Patriots, the side that finished bottom last season.England T20 specialist Tymal Mills and several Afghanistan players – including IPL-bound Rashid Khan and Mohammad Nabi – are among the big names in the CPL draft.Marquee CPL players in 2017: Martin Guptill (Guyana Amazon Warriors), Lasith Malinga (St. Lucia Stars), Brendon McCullum (Trinbago Knight Riders), Chris Morris (St Kitts & Nevis Patriots), Kumar Sangakkara (Jamaica Tallawahs), Kane Williamson (Barbados Tridents)

Over the past six years, Nathan Lyon has often had reason to worry about his role in the Australian Test team. Seldom, though, has this had anything to do with a case of physical infirmity. A durable body has been central to Lyon’s tenure, even to the point that other challengers for a spin berth have missed chances to replace him by dint of their own injuries.However this week in Ranchi, Lyon is entering arguably the most important Test match of his career with a red-raw spinning finger on his right hand, the aftermath of a split callus caused by bowling so many overs in India’s spin-friendly conditions, often with a new and hard SG ball. Lyon would be the last man to play this up, but his discomfort during the latter stages of the Bengaluru match, having claimed eight memorable victims on day one, was obvious.”I’ve bowled a lot of balls over the summer and it usually happens once or twice a year,” Lyon said. “The last time I was here, the same thing happened in the third Test and I was able to play three days later. So I’m more than confident in turning out for the next Test, depending on selection I guess.”It’s just one of those things. It just split. It was pretty painful there for a bit. And you can’t bowl on tape – there’s rules and laws out there that you can’t bowl on tape. So I wasn’t even considering that. There was a little sharp bit on the quarter seam and I just caught it, catching a couple of times. It just split. There’s no rocket science to it. I had a split finger. That’s it.”Yeah it hurts a lot. I’m able to bowl cross-seam and stuff, so I can still try to spin it, but for variations and trying to get drift and drop and stuff – two go at the back of the ball – the way I bowl. It does impede it a little bit, but we’ve gone through that now and moved on from the second Test and now I’m just looking forward to Ranchi.”A sore spinning finger from plenty of bowling is the sort of problem many a spinner has dealt with, and a problem all would like to have. Lyon’s is in many ways symptomatic of Australia’s fortunes in this series – like the fallout from Bengaluru, it is a by-product of doing far better against India than many had expected.”Yeah definitely there’s a lot of belief. There’s a lot of people who wrote us off, before we even got on a plane and landed in Dubai. Let alone coming over here,” Lyon said. “Everyone said that we were going to lose 4-0. It’s 1-1, we’re one win away from regaining the trophy and that’s what we are here to do.”The pressure is right on India – there’s no pressure on us. Everyone said we were going to lose 4-nil, they’re no good. They’re a young cricket team learning. But we believe we can beat the best teams anywhere in the world. We proved that in the first Test, we came close in the second Test and even that hurt – that’s probably the best thing about that game. That hurt from losing, but being able to get so close to them.”So we know they’re a brilliant team in these conditions. So if we can keep competing hard against them, who knows. Keep batting well in partnerships, bowling well in partnerships, taking 20 wickets and we’ll see where we get to. I think they’re feeling the pressure a little bit to be honest. And it’s good.”A hallmark of Lyon’s work so far in this series has been the vast majority of his overs delivered from over the wicket to the right-handers. Gone are the days when Lyon used the line from around the stumps as a security blanket, but he said that the pitch chosen by India’s captain Virat Kohli for the Ranchi Test would play a role in which angle from he attacked – and also whether Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc’s replacement gained much in the way of reverse swing.”The last two pitches I’ve been able to get good bounce, sharp bounce and fast spin off the wicket as well,” he said. “If the wicket wasn’t doing that as much, then I’d look at the option of coming around the wicket. But it just really depends on the type of wicket. I know there’s three wickets at Ranchi, so we’ll just have to wait and see which one they play.”I think the wickets are abrasive enough in India that we can hopefully get the ball reverse-swinging. We saw Josh Hazlewood take six wickets and Mitchell Starc did what he did in the second innings. With our air speed and ability to get the ball reversing, and the earlier we can do that the better off it is, but the wickets here are that abrasive that normally the ball can tend to go reverse quite early anyway.”

Inaugural season results
Karachi finished the 2016 campaign with the worst win-loss record of all teams. They did the double over the equally abject Lahore Qalandars, but lost all their matches against every other team. The excessively forgiving format meant they went through to the last four despite only two wins in eight, edging Lahore out on net run rate. There, they were walloped by eventual winners Islamabad by nine wickets, bringing a gloomy tournament to an aptly ignominious end.Team assessment
Karachi Kings were busy in the transfer market, most notably bringing in Chris Gayle and Kumar Sangakarra from Lahore Qalandars and Quetta Gladiators respectively; the latter has been appointed captain this season. This is the franchise’s third captain in a year. Shoaib Malik stepped down last season after the group stages, and Man of the Series Ravi Bopara was appointed for the eliminator.That brings us to the Kings’ only bright spot last year. Ravi Bopara, never one for attention-seeking, what with his workmanlike batting and military-medium bowling, finished as the second-highest run-scorer and joint fifth-highest wicket-taker. His 11 wickets included an astonishing 6 for 16 against the Lahore Qalandars, so far the best figures in the PSL’s short history. He has been retained, and might hope for a bit more support from his teammates this time around.Chris Gayle and Kieron Pollard are the biggest T20 names, although their recent form has been mixed. Gayle was the third-highest scorer in the 2016 Caribbean Premier League, but his Bangladesh Premier League performance – of greater relevance, given where the PSL is being played – was ordinary, with 109 runs in five games. Pollard scored 145 runs in eight matches for the Adelaide Strikers in the Big Bash, but Karachi Kings will need more than that from their volatile West Indians.Unburdened by the captaincy, Shoaib Malik may begin to play more freely. While his performance in last year’s edition was unremarkable, his outings in the CPL and the BPL have been solid – he has averaged 32.87 and 41.71 respectively. The evergreen Sangakarra, too, had a prolific BPL, ending up as the fourth highest run-scorer. However, his form in franchise T20 cricket over the past year or so has dipped, and might be a concern.The heart of the bowling attack has a Pakistani flavour, with Mohammad Amir, Sohail Khan and Imad Wasim comprising the three likely frontline bowlers. Amir was decent without being earth-shattering for the Kings last year, while Imad Wasim’s stock has risen since 12 months ago, owing much to his stellar international showings.Key foreign player
Karachi have a host of big-name foreign players, but none of them really convinces, either because of form or age. In such circumstances, it might be best to revert to what is already known and highlight Ravi Bopara once more. How a player who has never shown signs of the T20 nous he exhibited last season took the league by storm was nothing short of stunning. He will ply his trade on similar tracks to the ones he hit such a purple patch on last season, but with significantly more confidence. Similar performances this time around may even see him pushing for an international recall after a two-year absence.Under-the-radar local lad
It has been more than six years since Shahzaib Hasan last played for Pakistan, but a monster hundred in a List A game two weeks ago might give us a glimpse of the form he’s in. As a World T20 winner with Pakistan in 2009, he is unlikely to be fazed by anything the PSL can throw at him. He played only two games for Karachi last year, but if the side’s batting superstars fail to live up to their billing, Shahzaib could be given an extended run in the side, and remind Pakistani fans why a World Cup winners medal hangs around his neck.Kumar Sangakkara’s inclusion should bolster Karachi Kings’ batting•Daily Star

Availability
There was no transfer activity during the replacement draft for the Karachi Kings. Everyone in the squad is available for the duration of the tournament, and there are no injury concerns.Coaches and Staff
Mickey Arthur (head coach), Azhar Mahmood (assistant coach), Rashid Latif (director), Abdul Majeed (fielding coach), Asad Ali (physio)Karachi Kings squad
Kumar Sangakkara (c), Chris Gayle, Shoaib Malik, Kieron Pollard, Mohammad Amir, Ravi Bopara, Imad Wasim, Babar Azam, Ryan McLaren, Sohail Khan, Shahzaib Hasan, Saifullah Bangash, Khurram Manzoor, Kashif Bhatti, Abrar Ahmed, Abdul Hameed
Supplementary players: Mahela Jayawardene, Usama Mir, Rahat Ali, Amad Alam

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details1:20

‘Stoked to get a win’ – Borren

Netherlands shook off a rocky start in pursuit of Oman’s 146 – left-arm seamer Bilal Khan was on a hat-trick in the first over – as a 93-run stand between Man of the Match Michael Rippon and Wesley Barresi set the platform for their five-wicket victory. The top-seeded team in Group B hardly broke a sweat until two wickets in four balls accounted for both Rippon and Barresi to leave Netherlands needing 46 off 28 balls with two fresh batsmen at the crease.Roelof van der Merwe shone at the end, scoring an unbeaten 35 off just 15 balls. Oman’s bowlers continued to scratch and claw, claiming captain Peter Borren caught behind as Netherlands required 18 to win off the final 12 balls. But Max O’Dowd’s straight six into the Oman dugout four balls into the 19th over brought the equation down to a run a ball and van der Merwe’s sixth four clinched victory with four balls to spare.Self-inflicted woundsOman were competitive for long stretches of the match, but shot themselves in the foot several times to give the momentum back to Netherlands. Opener Zeeshan Maqsood was the only top-order batsman to fire for Oman. He creamed the first ball he faced for four over mid-off and continued to hum along – he struck three fours through the off side against Ahsan Malik in the sixth over – with the only trouble provided by Paul van Meekeren’s height and bounce.At the opposite end, Khawar Ali was bogged down scoring just 2 off his first 10 balls. In an effort to get unshackled, Khawar charged on the last ball of the ninth over and drove firmly back to Rippon, who deflected the ball onto the stumps with Maqsood run-out backing up too far.Khawar made it a double-whammy in the 14th over when he was involved in a comical run-out. He skied a slog against Rippon who backpedaled chasing the ball as Khawar took a lackadaisical start to make sure a new batsman wouldn’t be on strike, but Rippon spilled the catch and soon fired a throw. He missed and Timm van der Gugten mishandled the backup at short fine leg. A mix-up ensued between the batsmen for the overthrow and Ajay Lalcheta was halfway down the track when Khawar decided against the run and van der Gugten relayed the ball to Barresi at the striker’s end.Three balls later, Khawar ended a forgettable stay at the crease by dragging his back foot out on another attempted heave and was stumped for 17 off 26 balls. A 57-run stand between Naseem Khushi and Khurram Nawaz salvaged some respect for Oman to get them to 146 but much of the damage had already been done.Roelof van der Merwe finished on an unbeaten 35 off 15•Peter Della Penna

Van der Merwe gives the finishing touchFifteen deliveries, 15 scoring shots and zero dot balls for van der Merwe after arriving with the pressure rising in the chase. He tickled the first ball he faced – a yorker – past short fine leg for four and turning yorkers into runs was a recurring theme in his innings.The pivotal sequence came in the 17th over as Bilal returned after his first-over gems on the off stump line to Stephan Myburgh and Ben Cooper. Four of the first five balls in the 17th over bowled by Bilal were yorkers, but Netherlands scored off every one.The crème de la crème came on the third ball when van der Merwe took a step forward to convert it into a low full toss, carving it perfectly between point and backward point for four. Bilal dropped short on the last ball and van der Merwe pulled him with ease past short fine leg for another four to conclude a 12-run over. Van der Merwe dug out a yorker for the winning shot over point as well.”I think that in my time with the Netherlands, that’s Roelof’s best performance so far,” Netherlands interim coach Chris Adams said after the match. “We expect him to bowl well, we expect him to field well and we expect him to bring a lot in the change room. We also expect him to play innings like that and I think he’s been a little bit shy of doing that so far. It’s a tough time to come in and it was a tough ask today but he played the sort of innings which tends to determine T20 games.”Unsung heroPaul van Meekeren’s 1 for 21 in four overs made him the third-most economical bowler on the day, but that does not do justice to how much difficulty he posed for Oman’s batsmen. He set the tone for Khawar’s nightmare by greeting him with a bouncer in the fifth over and continued to use the short ball to great effect, something every fast bowler struggled with on the first day.Van Meekeren’s first three overs went for just nine runs. Even after an overstep in the 11th, Lalcheta couldn’t lay bat on the free hit. Several balls in his final over were mistimed in the air before falling safely in no man’s land. His only bad ball was his last delivery, a length ball swatted by Khushi that just cleared a leaping Pieter Seelaar on the midwicket rope for six. He may prove a handful for Scotland on Tuesday in a battle of Group B unbeatens.

Scorecard and ball-by-ball detailsA succession of soft dismissals left Sri Lanka in danger of a big defeat in the first Test despite their batsmen, almost without exception, looking comfortable at the crease in their pursuit of 488. No team has successfully chased more than 418 to win a Test match, but Sri Lanka suggested they were capable of giving South Africa a serious scare only to gift away four of the five wickets they lost on day four. Angelo Mathews, who witnessed two of these gifted wickets from the non-striker’s end, was batting on 58 at stumps, and with him was Dhananjaya de Silva on 9.A mix-up between Dimuth Karunaratne and Kaushal Silva ended an 87-run stand for the first wicket, while a moment of overconfidence cost Kusal Mendis his wicket after he had added 75 for the fourth wicket with Mathews. Kusal Perera and Dinesh Chandimal frittered away their wickets as well, and at stumps, 248 adrift of their target, Sri Lanka were left counting what-ifs, with an entire day remaining on a pitch that seemed to have flattened out entirely after starting out as a green seamer.South Africa declared 10.5 overs into the morning session, after Faf du Plessis and Quinton de Kock had completed half-centuries and stretched their overnight partnership to 129. The declaration arrived when Rangana Herath had de Kock lbw for 69, missing a sweep against a ball that was probably too full and too close to off stump to play the shot against safely.

Sri Lanka’s opening stand and Quinton de Kock’s 2016

• 87 Runs added for the opening wicket by Kaushal Silva and Dimuth Karunaratne. This is the best opening stand for Sri Lanka in Tests in South Africa beating the 70 added by Tillakaratne Dilshan and Lahiru Thirimanne in Cape Town. It is also the second-highest opening stand for Sri Lanka against South Africa, after the 193 between Marvan Atapattu and Sanath Jayasuriya in Galle in 2000.

• 196 Number of balls faced by Silva and Karunaratne in their partnership of 87. This is the fourth longest that any opening pair has played in the fourth innings of a Test in South Africa. Herschelle Gibbs and Gary Kirsten played 261 balls against Australia at Durban in 2002.

• 7 Number of fifty-plus scores for Quinton de Kock in 2016.This is the most by a South Africa batsman in 2016. Hashim Amla and Stephen Cook have five such scores each. De Kock has had a great year scoring 695 runs at 63.18

Both Sri Lankan openers missed out on half-centuries, but showed they had worked on the weaknesses that had caused their first-innings dismissals. Silva was eventually lbw for the second time in the match when Rabada nipped one into him after tea, but had till then shown improved balance and alignment while dealing with South Africa’s concerted effort to attack his stumps, and had looked particularly good while driving straight. Rabada’s extra pace and bounce had discomfited him a couple of times before that. Before lunch, he had gloved a rising ball, managing to drop his bottom hand and keep the ball down in front of Quinton de Kock diving to his right behind the stumps. Then, in the second session, he had taken a blow to the shoulder while ducking into a bouncer delivered from wide of the crease.Karunaratne, apart from a couple of moments when he lost concentration, was alive to the danger of playing away from his body. The seamers looked to get him nibbling with the angle across him, and then tried to go around the wicket as well, but he handled both lines well, making sure his hands didn’t follow the ball when he was beaten. He was just getting into stride when he was dismissed, having moved from 20 off 90 balls to 43 off 113. He had hit three fours in that period of acceleration, including a sweetly-timed flick off Philander and a reverse-sweep off Maharaj immediately after the left-arm spinner had got one to spit at him out of the rough.The opening stand ended when Silva pushed Maharaj into the covers and set off immediately. Karunaratne responded after a moment’s hesitation, and that little stutter was enough to find him short of his crease when he dived to beat JP Duminy’s throw to the keeper.Then Perera, his place at No. 3 in question after his dismissal to a wild slash in the first innings, fell to another injudicious stroke, top-edging a cut against the turn off Maharaj when he was getting consistent turn and bounce out of the rough.When Mathews walked in, Sri Lanka had lost three wickets for 31 runs either side of tea, but he immediately showed the positive intent of a man with a fourth-innings average of 69.37, rotating the strike comfortably at the start before stepping out to his 17th ball and drilling Keshav Maharaj back past him for four. Rabada fed him a wide long-hop and a full-toss in the next over, and he put both away to the boundary, before a back-foot whip off Maharaj took him to 25 off 27 balls.Then, with Vernon Philander returning to the attack, Mathews made a strategic retreat, scoring only six runs off the next 29 balls he faced. He was perhaps mindful that he needed to be at the crease when the second new ball became available on a pitch where the old ball was doing almost nothing. By then, though, Silva had fallen to the daftest of shots, taking on the returning Rabada’s around-the-wicket attack by making himself room and looking to ramp over the slips. All he managed was an edge to the keeper.Mendis’ innings had always promised that sort of end. His 58 had displayed a vast range of shots – notable among them an off-drive off Philander and a number of sweeps off Maharaj – but also a tinge of impetuosity. In the over before his dismissal, he had run down the track to Maharaj and looked to hit him over mid-on, mistimed his shot horribly, and fortuitously managed to hit the fielder on the bounce.Chandimal didn’t learn from Mendis’ close shave against Maharaj. Having already been dropped once while going after the left-arm spinner – Dean Elgar putting him down at short extra-cover – he tried it again, with the new ball 2.4 overs away, and spooned the ball straight to mid-on.South Africa took the new ball as soon as it was due, and came very close very early. Abbott, starting the 82nd over of Sri Lanka’s innings, caught Dhananjaya de Silva shuffling too far across his stumps, and Bruce Oxenford upheld his lbw appeal immediately. De Silva reviewed – perhaps more in desperation than any real hope of getting the decision overturned – and ball-tracking saved him, suggesting the ball would have carried on to miss leg stump.

Players will be chasing a slice of Cricket Australia’s digital revenue, arguing the content could not exist without them, when negotiations for a new payment memorandum of understanding (MOU) formally begin in Melbourne on Friday.Ahead of talks that are set to be among the most willing since the threat of a player strike, in 1997, led to the creation of the Australian Cricketers’ Association, ESPNcricinfo has learned that the players union will be seeking a more expansive definition of Australian Cricket Revenue (ACR), the pool of money from which the players’ fixed revenue percentage of around 25% is drawn.The last MOU, negotiated in 2012, predated CA’s current broadcast rights deals, which included a substantial digital component for the first time. Lavish funds have been spent on the project, including the CA website, a subscription-based mobile app and extensive live streaming services. Yet the players, whose cricket the project covers, only have access to the money brought in by television deals, not their digital equivalents.While the players have been happy to help the project get off the ground over the past three summers, there is an eagerness now to “future-proof” the next MOU so new sources of revenue are not excluded from ACR. Though the cricketers’ pay model is the envy of the Australian sporting world, the ACA argues that the players actually get less than a fifth of all money in the game, termed Total Cricket Revenue.There has already been some furious spin on both sides of the argument, which will be led on the players’ side by the ACA chief executive Alistair Nicholson and on CA’s by the senior executive and former board director Kevin Roberts. While CA has said little about the looming talks, even to the point of refusing to guarantee the retention of the fixed revenue percentage model, Nicholson moved onto the front foot on Thursday.”It’s important that the facts are known because they paint a very different picture to that suggested,” Nicholson said. “Most think that the players are getting a bigger and bigger slice of the cricket pie. This is wrong. The opposite is actually true. And this is despite the fact that it is the players who have helped grow the game to make it what it is.”For the last 20 years, Cricket Australia and the players have worked together as genuine partners in the growth of the game, and the game in Australia has never been stronger. To suggest that players try harder or perform better due to the size of their contracts is not only wrong, but doesn’t respect the work that the players put in.”In reality, the players know more than anyone that they need to continue to fight to be the best in world cricket, and every time they pull on the Australian cap, they do so with immense pride and respect. The players have outlined their priorities including ongoing investment in grassroots cricket and a greater say on scheduling. This, along with including all cricketers, male and female in the one MOU, provides cricket with a fantastic opportunity to grow in the right way.”

There’s a generation of South Africans whose memories of watching their Test team play in Australia are the complete opposite of Faf du Plessis and his team’s. Generation now. Anyone 10 or younger has never known a South African side that has lost a Test series in Australia and to have added a layer to that legacy is this team’s greatest joy.”We know how hard it is. We watched on TV for so many years how hard it was to was for South Africa to come here and do well,” du Plessis said. “I suppose the younger guys looking from back home can see that it’s possible to come here and to an extent and dominate an Australian team. It is extremely special for us. It’s something we will remember as a team. That’s exactly what we came here to do, we want to create memories together.”Not since the West Indies between 1984 and 1992 has a team won three successive series in Australia but that is not the only thing that stands out about this South African victory. It is that they did it without the two players who have been stalwarts for a decade – AB de Villiers and Dale Steyn who are both injured – and Morne Morkel about whom there are concerns about match fitness. Also Hashim Amla, the leader of the batting line-up, contributed only 48 runs across three innings.Kyle Abbott was central to South Africa’s third consecutive series win in Australia•Cricket Australia/Getty Images

It has taken a total team effort, something du Plessis has lauded. “This team has been very close to exceptional,” he said. “There haven’t been many things we’ve done wrong. We have been consistent in the way we perform. We are not relying on one or two players. All XI are putting our hands up at different times and that’s what you want from your team.”Australia were warned of South Africa’s ability to spread the load last month in the ODI series. Albeit in a different format, in different conditions, South Africa’s 5-0 victory did provide the springboard for this series. “We came across here with a lot of confidence,” du Plessis said.Self-belief helped South Africa bounce back from a poor first day in Perth to take 10 for 86 and set themselves up for victory there. It also propelled them to pluck Australia for 85 in the first innings in Hobart. The twin collapses showed South Africa that Australia had weaknesses they could exploit, especially if they targetted their senior players.”When you are a team that’s under the pump and under pressure and not playing as well as you like, confidence will fade away,” du Plessis said. “It’s hard to fake it. We didn’t give them the opportunity to do it [assert themselves over a long period of time]. It was important to keep the important guys in the team quiet – David Warner and Steve Smith. If you can put a lot of pressure on them, the younger guys won’t have that same punch. We made sure those guys have been relatively quiet in the series. Even guys like [Mitchell] Starc, he bowled well in that one spell but if you are on top, that’s when you get a five-for and you clean the tail up. We were just really good in making sure we stopped that.”Faf du Plessis: “This team has been very close to exceptional. There haven’t been many things we’ve done wrong.”•Cricket Australia/Getty Images

On the other hand, once South Africa got an opening, they were unstoppable. It took just 95 minutes for them to finish Australia off on the fourth morning. Du Plessis did not expect the series win to come so quickly, although he suspected victory was inevitable after the pressure his bowlers piled on late on the third day. “I didn’t expect it to happen that quickly,” du Plessis said. “Yesterday, our bowling was exceptional. The last hour and a half, we were so good in our areas and relentless. We didn’t get the results we wanted but we knew today if we came back, it would change for us. This is one of those sessions we will always remember as a team, that won us the series and it was unbelievable.”It was unbelievable because it was more dominant than a South African side has ever been in Australia. Four years ago, South Africa battled through the first two drawn Tests and then won the third. Eight years ago, they won the first two Tests and lost the third. This time, du Plessis wants to take everything South Africa can from this trip, which means a win in their first day-night Test in Adelaide.”That is the mission for us now,” he said. “We want to do that very badly. We won’t rest on our laurels and be happy with 2-1 or even 2-0. We’ve got Australia in a position where they are under pressure and we don’t want to let that go. It’s hard enough to get them in this position so we will do everything we can to make it 3-0.”What memories that will make.