Jansen shines with the ball after Bavuma's heroics with the bat

In Durban, where it always rains when the Proteas play and where it gets dark at 3pm, the sun was still shining when the second day’s play ended on Thursday. 

The Proteas assumed control of the first Test against Sri Lanka, by recovering from 117/7 to make 191, thanks to skipper Temba Bavuma’s invaluable 22nd half-century. 

That looks like a monstrous first innings total after Marco Jansen’s thunderous 41-ball spell in which he crushed the tourists with a career-best 7/13. He had the new ball nipping around, jumping up from an uncomfortable length and generally he was just being a pest. 

It was too much for Sri Lanka, who posted the lowest Test total against South Africa of 42, the lowest at Kingsmead, and faced the second-fewest number of balls in a completed Test innings — 83. Their mood in contrast to their opponents was gloomy. 

The outlook for them looks bleak, but that was also the case here five years ago when Kusal Perera engineered that glorious run chase. On that occasion they needed 304 in the fourth innings. They will need a good deal more whenever their next turn comes to bat, with South Africa’s lead already at 281 runs after they batted to 132/3 at the close. 

“When the sun was out [on Thursday] morning, we actually thought there’d be a lot less movement than there was on the first day, when there was so much cloud around,” Jansen said. 

Those conditions impressed on the South Africans the importance of the new ball, he said, and they set themselves the ambitious target of three wickets while it was still, hard, shiny and the seam proud. But it went a great deal better than they could have dreamed with Jansen leading the way.

“The ball was moving nicely and quickly off the pitch, which we like. We knew if we put the ball in the right areas, with it nipping, we felt we could always be in the game. We bowled well in terms of our intensity and energy on the ball.”

Such was Jansen’s dominance he even had room for a few errors with his run-up. At one point he had a strange sequence in which he picked up two wickets after bowling no-balls and another when he followed a no-ball with a dot and then bowled Dinesh Chandimal off his back leg.

“Gerald [Coetzee] asked me what’s the bookie’s name [after the third one],”Jansen joked. “It was funny because at one stage the only runs I’d conceded were no-balls.”

The strong gusts of wind, which had caps and plastic bags flying around and the bails dropping from their grooves atop the stumps, were giving Jansen some problems, but most notably he explained, was the new, shortened run-up he was using — a change he made while undertaking his strength and conditioning programme. 

“In the white ball series against India, everything was fine. It was just one of those days where I ran in too quickly or didn’t start on my mark every time.

“From the third over, I made a conscious effort to be a foot behind my mark and then I was either ‘half and half’ or a bit behind [the line].”

Most importantly, there were no wickets off no-balls, as was the case for Lahiru Kumara on Thursday when he had Bavuma caught behind on 28, but was informed that he had overstepped the front line.

That reprieve proved to be expensive, with Bavuma’s first innings of 70 allowing South Africa to take control of the Test match.

“Personally I thought we’d get bowled out for 130-ish and then his innings helped us to 191,” said Jansen. “His knock was crucial especially with how the ball was seaming around. It might not be a hundred, but the value of that 70, it might as well be a hundred.”