*Official* South Africa Tour of Sri Lanka 2018

[TT Boy]

Zondo looked competent against the Indian spinners. Missed a trick not selecting him, and you would rather he played in these conditions than at home where he isn’t very good against pace.

 

[Mr Miyagi]

Nz has not had a better test victory since Colombo 2012 imo.

Damn Southee was good in that game.

I don't really recall him ever bowling that well again to be honest.

I've seen him swing it, but it was his pace in that game 140 to mid 140's continuously, instead of his 129 to 133 that he has been operating at of late.

But on paper - the Philip Hughes win over Pakistan in the UAE was the best turnaround of a NZ test well before 2012 imo.

But it was a very odd test after Philip Hughes passed away. Just sadly bizarre. Almost eerie.

 

[Top_Cat]

Geez SL a rough place to tour at the moment eh? This bowling unit were ****ing sensational, pressure pressure pressure and then bam. Awesome to watch.

 

[Borges]

Sri Lanka has historically been a tough place to tour, even for the other sub-continental teams.

 

[flibbertyjibber]

Some win for SL that. Sides struggling so much away at present unless they are playing England.

 

[Top_Cat]

Sri Lanka has historically been a tough place to tour, even for the other sub-continental teams.

Yeah but that was on the back of a couple of greats who outclassed them. Teams touring now are made to look look like they don’t know which end of the cue to hold.

 

[TheJammyTurtle]

Klaasen has to play next test imo.Clearly a better player of spin then anyone who played today,and scored runs when South Africa A toured here last.Only concern is he didn’t even get a bat in the warm up game.

 

[Xuhaib]

Amla needs to call it a day before his average goes down further at one stage I had him above Younis, laxman, sehwag KP etc now he is just barley Moyo,Ganguly,samaraweera level.

 

[Stefan9]

Won't win may test matches if none of your side matches even 50. Terrible batting once again...

 

[Black_Warrior]

This kind of performance will obviously come under harsh criticism but to be honest, I can see most non Asian sides today falling like this in these conditions. There are very few quality players of spin today (Asian sides included)

 

[Prince EWS]

This kind of performance will obviously come under harsh criticism

It'll probably come under less criticism than it should. I can imagine lots of people looking at the scorecard without having watched any of the game and just immediately jumping to moaning about "pitch doctoring".

This was definitely a turner but both teams actually batted quite poorly IMO. I didn't watch the entire game because there's been so much other cricket to watch and I've had NRL games on too, but from what I saw there's no way we should've only had one team innings over 200 in the match (and that too only because one bloke scored a big unbeaten ton). It wasn't a minefield.

 

[cnerd123]

It'll probably come under less criticism than it should. I can imagine lots of people looking at the scorecard without having watched any of the game and just immediately jumping to moaning about "pitch doctoring".

This was definitely a turner but both teams actually batted quite poorly IMO. I didn't watch the entire game because there's been so much other cricket to watch and I've had NRL games on too, but from what I saw there's no way we should've only had one team innings over 200 in the match (and that too only because one bloke scored a big unbeaten ton). It wasn't a minefield.

Both sides did bowl pretty exceptionally from whatever I got to see tbf.

 

[Black_Warrior]

It'll probably come under less criticism than it should. I can imagine lots of people looking at the scorecard without having watched any of the game and just immediately jumping to moaning about "pitch doctoring".

This was definitely a turner but both teams actually batted quite poorly IMO. I didn't watch the entire game because there's been so much other cricket to watch and I've had NRL games on too, but from what I saw there's no way we should've only had one team innings over 200 in the match (and that too only because one bloke scored a big unbeaten ton). It wasn't a minefield.

Yepp as I said, there aren't a lot of good players of spin around the world today

 

[the big bambino]

Amla needs to call it a day before his average goes down further at one stage I had him above Younis, laxman, sehwag KP etc now he is just barley Moyo,Ganguly,samaraweera level.

I'm not sure how good the up and coming SA batsmen are but if Bavuma is leading the pack then I'd worry about the immediate future. The bowling too, might rely even more on Rabada and leaning heavily on Ngidi for support. We've seen a great side whose players are growing old at the same time and this could be the start of a leaner period while they look to rebuild. I'd always thought Australia's tour of SA came a year too soon. Would've been better if managed to catch them this coming summer.

 

[Bolo]

I can imagine lots of people looking at the scorecard without having watched any of the game and just immediately jumping to moaning about "pitch doctoring".

I've seen this sort of comment a few times, but no actual complaints about pitch doctoring. I think everyone accepts that RSAs batting was trash.

I fully support pitch doctoring anyway, as long as it doesn't reduce the outcome to the toss. It happens, and we need to be honest about it because we can't stop it.

 

[Prince EWS]

I've seen this sort of comment a few times, but no actual complaints about pitch doctoring.

I didn't really mean on CW.

 

[Bolo]

I didn't really mean on CW.

I've seen this outside of CW too. Tbf though, I've not looked at stuff like Facebook, where it's probably happening.

 

[Prince EWS]

I've seen this outside of CW too. Tbf though, I've not looked at stuff like Facebook, where it's probably happening.

I haven't really seen it either, but I can totally imagine it happening en masse amongst fans in that lovely goldilocks area of "interested enough to check scorecards but not interested enough to watch games or develop informed, unbiased views". I reckon if I asked my mate Brett what he thought of this game right now he'd start talking about cheating Sri Lankan pitch doctorers immediately, before inevitably bringing up Murali taking wickets against Zimbabwe and going off on a tangent about that.

 

[Bolo]

I haven't really seen it either, but I can totally imagine it happening en masse amongst fans in that lovely goldilocks area of "interested enough to check scorecards but not interested enough to watch games or develop informed, unbiased views". I reckon if I asked my mate Brett what he thought of this game right now he'd start talking about cheating Sri Lankan pitch doctorers immediately, before inevitably bringing up Murali taking wickets against Zimbabwe and going off on a tangent about that.

No need to bring up Muralis Zim record. The fact that he was a filthy chucker is enough information.
/S

 

[Maximas]

I think Lakmal promoting himself above phatty and scoring 33no with Sandakan for company was my favourite part of day 3, batting allrounder

I'm pretty concerned about how batting positions 6-8 flopped in this match though, the struggles were largely against pace too