Despite beating the West Indies by an innings and 100 runs with two days in hand to win the Castle Lager series two-one, South Africa will go down one place on the international rankings, dropping below Sri Lanka to third place, but Proteas captain Graeme Smith is not too concerned.
”We’re not too fussed about that at the moment,” said Smith after South Africa’s victory at Kingsmead on Saturday.
”We’re really just chuffed with the way we performed in the last two Tests. We know we let ourselves down in the first Test in Port Elizabeth. And we know if we perform well the rest of the year, the rankings will take care of themselves.
”The challenge is to keep on getting better as individuals and as a team, and if we can do that — better ourselves, better our training methods, better our performances, then everything else takes care of itself.
”Right now it’s important to celebrate a good Test series victory. There have been some wonderful highlights, some really good individual performances, and a really good fight back by a South African team that has shown a lot of skill and a good will to win.”
Smith said the West Indies deserved credit for a very good series.
”They played very good cricket and we had to work very hard. We probably broke them down a little bit in this Test to beat them in three days, but they’ve shown a lot more character and discipline and more of a will to fight and put in good performances.
”I think we outplayed them in this game, but other than that, we’ve had to earn everything we’ve got in this series.”
He said he was pleased with his own performance, getting 147 in the third Test and 85 in the second.
”I had a pretty good Test and one-day series in Pakistan then came back to [face] New Zealand, and didn’t have the best innings against them. I got two starts in the first three innings of this series and didn’t really cash in, but then once I got that 85, the confidence came back and everything started to flow. It was nice to make a big hundred in the first innings here. Two hundreds and an eighty in six or seven Test matches — hopefully we can step it up a gear again.”
Special cheer
Chasing 418 to make South Africa bat again, the West Indies were bowled out for 317 in their second innings. Man of the series Dale Steyn, took six wickets for 72 runs.
The West Indies, who were rolled over for 139 in the first innings, looked far more like the team that won the first Test in Port Elizabeth last year as they defied South Africa and edged ever closer to making the Proteas bat again, but it was not to be.
Daren Ganga and Brenton Parchment resumed on the overnight score of 23 without loss and added 10 runs before Dale Steyn got his second wicket of the Test, when he trapped Parchment leg before wicket for 20 in the fourth over of the morning.
Makhaya Ntini, who is rapidly approaching Allan Donald’s total of 330 Test wickets, claimed the next wicket when Ganga got an edge and was caught at second slip by a diving Jacques Kallis. Ntini now needs just one wicket to overtake Donald.
There was a special cheer when South Africa’s leading wicket-taker Shaun Pollock had Runako Morton lbw for 37, scored at a run a ball. Morton hit seven boundaries.
Pollock announced on Friday this Test would be his last, and that he would retire from limited overs cricket at the end of the five-match one-day series.
At 88 for three, it appeared to be just a matter of time before the West Indies succumbed, but Marlon Samuels and captain Dwayne Bravo had other ideas. They batted throughout the second session, putting on 144 runs for the fourth wicket before a magnificent yorker from Steyn trapped Bravo leg before wicket for 75.
It was his ninth Test half century, with his 50 coming up off 67 balls. Samuels and Denesh Ramdin continued the fightback with a partnership of 41, which ended when Ramdin was caught behind by Mark Boucher off Andre Nel for 25.
Samuels’ innings was a mixture of caution and calypso style cricket. He needed 120 balls for his 50, and then hit out with style until he became becalmed in the nineties. He missed out on a century in the first Test in Port Elizabeth, going out on 94, but this time he made sure and reached his second Test ton off 180 balls, hitting 18 fours.
Steyn finally dislodged Samuels, bowling him for 105. With Samuels gone, the West Indies collapsed, with Steyn mopping up the tail. Darren Sammy and Jerome Taylor both made 17, but Daren Powell and Fidel Edwards were both out without scoring.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who made a century in the first Test and two unbeaten fifties in the second, did not bat, because he was suffering from flu. – Sapa