At the Durban Test

Excerpts from my notebook

The following is copied from the notebook of the SABC’s statistician.

Day 1

• Sri Lankan seamers have taken 34 more wickets than Sri Lankan spinners in 2024. That’s the biggest margin in their favour since 1992.

• Averages for spin at Kingsmead:

  • 1990s: 38.03

  • 2000s: 31.22

  • 2010s: 27.82

  • 2020s: 21.40

Day 2

• Marco Jansen becomes the second South African left-arm seamer to take fifty Test wickets. Only Trevor Goddard (123) has more. (A mere two per cent of South Africa’s post-isolation deliveries belong to this category of bowler.)

• Kingsmead’s most recent two Tests have now seen its two lowest totals:

  • 53 all out by Bangladesh, 2022/23 (all wickets falling to spin)

  • 42 all out by Sri Lanka, 2024/25 (all wickets falling to pace)

• Which is to say that South Africa’s last twenty wickets at Kingsmead have cost just 95 runs.

• Sri Lanka’s 13.5-over innings is the briefest in 100 years. The briefest was South Africa’s 12.3 overs in Birmingham in 1924.

• There were five ducks in Sri Lanka’s innings—the most in their history. India, famously, suffered six in Cape Town earlier this year (the joint-worst of all), and went on to win the match…

• Mendis’s duck was his fourth in succession in Test cricket in South Africa. He has five in his last eight innings in this country. His seven career ducks against the Proteas are eclipsed only by

  • Muralitharan (8)

  • Chris Martin (9)

  Courtney Walsh’s thirteen against Australia is the record against a single opponent.

• There have been as many sub-fifty totals in the last fourteen years as in the 106 years before that:

  • 1903-2009: 8

  • 2010-present: 8

• Only once in 147 years of Test cricket has a team won after scoring fewer than fifty: England, 45 all out, went on to beat Australia, at Sydney in 1886/87, by thirteen runs.

• Only Steve Harmison has a cheaper Test seven-for (12 runs, in Kingston, 2004) than the one Jansen has just recorded (13).

• Sri Lanka had registered just one previous sub-200 first-innings total since 2022/23—their 196 v. England at Lord’s. Only twice in that time have they trailed on the first innings.

• Keshav Maharaj is no stranger to missing out on a bowl. It’s happened to him in ten innings since his debut. This is the first time on his home ground.

• A major challenge for Aiden Markram as he faces up to Prabath Jayasuriya: He averages 16.53 against left-arm spin in Test cricket, having fallen four times in four innings to Ragana Herath (Jayasuriya’s predecessor in this role), at 4.25 runs per dismissal.

• It’s taken seventeen matches for Jayasuriya to secure his 100th Test wicket (De Zorzi). Only George Lohmann, 140 years ago, reached that landmark in less time. Sorted by innings rather than matches, the standings look like this:

  • Turner: 30

  • Grimmett: 32

  • Jayasuriya: 32

  • Lohmann: 32

  • Yasir Shah: 32

• Kingsmead has long been one of South Africa’s most bat-friendly grounds. Only Newlands (101) has more than its 74 Test centuries. But in the last fifteen years it has allowed just seven—the lowest of our five major grounds, and not half as many as the next lowest (St George’s, with sixteen).

• Temba Bavuma’s conversion rate:

  • in Test Matches: 8.33% (the lowest ever for a batsman with at least two centuries)

  • in ODIs: 56% (which will be the highest ever if it’s still at that level when he hits 2,000 runs—the standard cut-off point).

  • Even his T20 conversion rate (10%) is better than his Test one.

Day 3

• Asitha Fernando’s strike rate is the lowest in Sri Lanka’s history (44.4, well ahead of Muralitharan’s 55.0 and Malinga’s 51.5). So it’s no surprise to discover that he’s had only two baren spells longer than this one so far:

  • 26 overs: Wellington, 2023.

  • 15 overs: Chattogram, 2024

• Vishwa Fernando has more Test wickets in South Africa (24) than he does in Sri Lanka (18)—an extraordinary statistic, given the brevity and infrequency of these visits.

• Until late last month, South Africa hadn’t managed a 200+ partnership in the seven years since Elgar and Markram put on 243 v. Bangladesh in Bloemfontein, October 2017. Now they’ve done it in back-to-back Tests:

  • 201 between De Zorzi and Stubbs for the second wicket v. Bangladesh in Chattogram, October 2024

  • 249 between Bavuma and Stubbs for the fourth wicket v. Sri Lanka in Durban, November 2024

• Stubbs and Bavuma have equalled South Africa’s highest fourth-wicket stand in Durban (249), also held by Kallis and Kirsten (v. WI, 2003/04). It’s South Africa’s second-highest for that wicket anywhere, after the 308 between Amla and De Villiers v. West Indies at Centurion, 2014/15.

• Where have all the wickets gone? None so far today (just before tea). By this time yesterday, we’d had sixteen!

• The Proteas have been in rich six-hitting form:

  • Seven so far in this Test.

  • Seventeen in their first dig last time out against Bangladesh—their most ever in an innings.

• Sri Lanka’s target is 516. Never in Test cricket, and only once in the 252-year history of first-class cricket, has a total this big or bigger been chased down: 535 by West Zone v. South Zone in Pakistan, 2009/10.

• Fewest balls for two completed Test innings: 248 by South Africa v. England in Gqeberha, 1895/96. Sri Lanka must survive 27.3 overs to avoid taking that ignominious record.

• Fewest deliveries faced by Sri Lanka in a Test Match: 408 v. Australia, Melbourne, Boxing Day 2012. They’ll need 55.5 overs to avoid that one.

• South Africa’s no-ball troubles aren’t exceptional by historical standards: WPUJC Vaas once bowled thirty (!) in a Test Match. That’s almost as many no-balls as he has initials.

• Maharaj at Kingsmead:

  • Averages 40.80, and strikes every 88 balls, in the first innings.

  • Averages 14.85, and strikes every 26 balls, in the second innings.

• Rabada’s career strike rate (38.48), famously, is second only to the great George Lohmann’s 34.19. Less appreciated is that in the second innings, his 34.6 is the lowest ever, bar none, for any bowler with 50+ wickets. Among those with 100+, no-one else has a sub-40 strike rate.

• Only three bowlers in Test history have lower second-innings averages than Rabada’s 18.30. All three played in the Nineteenth Century:

  • Peel (1884-1896): 14.25

  • Briggs (1884-1899): 16.83

  • Trumble (1890-1904): 17.23

• Sri Lanka’s lowest run aggregate in a Test Match:

  • 210 v Pakistan, Kandy, 1985/86 (lost)

  • 210 v England, Leeds, 2016 (lost)

  They’re currently on 145, with just five wickets in hand…

Day 4

• Marco Jansen is on course for the cheapest ten-for in South Africa’s history:

  • Current best: Dale Steyn’s eleven for sixty against Pakistan in Jo’burg in 2012/13.

  • All-time best: Bert Ironmonger’s eleven for 24 v. South Africa in Melbourne, 1931/32.

• Sri Lanka’s resistance isn’t unusual, at least not for them. Their average runs per wicket in the fourth innings over the last fifteen years is 32.39. No other team averages thirty. The second-best is Australia’s 28.37.

• Nor is this a product of forgiving home conditions. The Sri Lankans are the best on the road, too, with 29.52—well ahead of Australia, again, with 26.46.

• Only twice have Sri Lanka put on 100+ for the sixth wicket in South Africa—both times in Durban, in 2011, and both times involving Chandimal:

  • 111 with Samaraweera, 1st innings

  • 104 with Sangakkara, 2nd innings.

  Ten more runs, and it will have happened a third time. (It does not.)

• No-one better exemplifies Sri Lanka’s fourth-innings bravery than Kusal Mendis, who averages 33.36 across the first three innings. This rises to 53.05 (including two away centuries) in the fourth.

• The wicket of Dinesh Chandimal was Gerald Coetzee’s 300th in all representative cricket. It all began for him back in December 2012, with the dismissal of A. Kwitshana for Free State Under-13s v. South Western Districts Under-13s.

• Jansen becomes the first left-arm seamer in more than a century to take ten-for in a Test for South Africa. Alf Hall got eleven for 112 v. England at Newlands in 1922/23.

• Jansen’s match figures (11/86) are the best ever by a seamer at Kingsmead, and the second-best here by any bowler. (Clarrie Grimmett took thirteen for 173 in 1936.)

• His performance also surpasses Hall’s, formerly the best by a South African left-arm seamer.

• South Africa’s victory is their first-ever over Sri Lanka at Kingsmead.

• It’s now 8½ years and 36 matches since we had a draw in South Africa (August 2016). Ours is the only country (apart from Ireland, which has seen just two Tests) to go drawless in this period.

Rodney Ulyate serves on the ACS general committee, and as cricket statistician and scorer for the South African Broadcasting Corporation.