February 16, 2019
1st Test between South Africa and Sri Lanka of Sri Lanka tour of South Africa, 2019 was started from February 13 in Durban. South Africa 1st inning score was 235 with the help of Quinton de Cock’s 80 runs off just 94 balls and Temba Bavuma’s 47 runs off 66 balls. Vishwa Fernando and Kasun Rajitha took 4 and 3 wickets by spending 62 runs and 68 runs respectively. Sri Lanka 1st innings was not good as the visitors just managed to make 191 runs in the scoreboard with Kusal Perera’s 51 runs off just 63 balls. Dale Steyn, South Africa’s leading wicket-taker took 4 wickets for just 48 runs. With the lead of 44 runs of the 1st innings, South Africa just managed to make 259 runs in the second innings with the help of captain Faf du Plessis’s 90 runs in 182 balls and Quinton de Cock’s 55 runs off just 62 balls. Debutant Latish Embuldeniya took 5-for for just 66 runs and Vishwa Fernando took 4 wickets for 71. The end of 2nd innings from South Africa means Sri Lanka needs 304 runs to win this test match.
Sri Lanka chase got a shock from the quality bowling attack of South Africa. In 37.4 overs, Sri Lanka found themselves at 110-5, still, 194 runs to win with 5 wickets in hand. Kusal Perera and Dhananjaya de Silva scored 96 runs partnership for 6th wickets. This partnership was threatening South Africa as Sri Lanka was marching towards victory. But Keshav Maharaj caught de Silva lbw in 63.1 overs as Sri Lanka found themselves reeling at 226-9 from 206-5. Sri Lanka still needed 78 runs with last wicket remaining. Then Kusal Perera played an astonishing knock of 153* runs of 200 balls and steal a win from South Africa. The duo of Kusal Perera and Vishwa Fernando played 95 balls for 78 runs where 11th number batsman, Vishwa faced 27 balls for his 6 runs.
Many of the cricket experts described this test match as the ‘GREATEST TEST MATCH OF THE CENTURY’. With this win, Sri Lanka removes the drought of 7 years’ winless test in South Africa. According to the stats of ESPN, this is the 13th time that a team has won a test match by just 1 wicket.
KUSAL JANITH PERERA whose icon is one of the greatest players of Sri Lanka – Sanath Jayasuriya, promised a lot but was failed but today he played a knock which will be remembered for a long period of time by the millions of cricket fans and players.
If you love test cricket, this test match got everything; thrill, drama, scene and many more and will help test cricket to become alive once again!
