Cullinan breaks South African record as Lankans reel

Paul Martin in Cape Town.

This contest may be extremely one-sided - South Africa have a 331-run lead over Sri Lanka in the Second Test with half their team still to bat and three (almost certainly sunny) days still remaining. But the match has had more than it's fair share of strange records or quasi-records.

First it was Pollock completing seven successive wickets in the two Sri Lankan first innings of the series, while conceding no runs at all during the wicket-taking.

Now there's another that we need to look up in Wisden, the cricket statistician's bible. Darryl Cullinan, in making his twelfth Test hundred, has, you see, scored a century in each of the last four Test-matches he has played at Newlands. Surely a Test recprd?

This beautiful piece of real estate nestles at the foot of Cape Town's famous landmark, Table Mountain, and Cullinan says: "It's my lucky ground." No kidding, Darryl.

Cullinan might still have been ruling his domain but for a direct throw from Chaminda Vaas. The 33-year-old later admitted that he set off for his run too slowly as he was a bit tired.

In reaching his 12th Test hundred, incidentally, Cullinan overtook opener Gary Kirsten, out for 52 on Tuesday, as South Africa's most prolific century-getter (a record that would almost certainly have been far exceeded by both Graeme Pollock and Barry Richards had the country not been isolated because of apartheid for 12 years).

Cullinan made 120 against England at Newlands last year, 168 against the West Indies the previous season and 113 against Sri Lanka in early 1998.

The pitch was nothing like as flat as the mountain-top, and offered something for both spinners and pacemen. That was evident when South Africa devastated the visitors in their first innings - all out for 95. True, the second day's pitch had been cut short, and therefore had less bounce, but it was still not the sort of wicket that would make life easy for batsmen.

The only mishap for the South Africans came after a cavalier knock by arguably the world's top wicketkeeper-batsman,, Mark Boucher. He had raced into the eighties, then found himself somewhat becalmed as he sneaked into the nineties.

At the other end "Zulu" Klusener, of all people, was adopting a very defensive posture against some admittedly ultra-defensive leg-side slow bowling by the canny Sir Lankans. They managed to slow the bowling rate from 20 overs in one hour earlier in the day, to just eleven in an hour. Outrageous, but the umpires did not interfere.

Klusener and Boucher had struck their first 50 runs from as many deliveries, but their next 44 runs came off 82 balls. Some of the crowd even slow-handclapped, bored by the deceleration. Boucher may also have been frustrated, because he suddenly had a big swing, to be easily caught in the deep for 92.

Still, at stumps on the second day, the home team were 426 for six wickets in reply to the tourists' meagre 95 all out, with Klusener 44 not out and the of-spinner-turned all-rounder Nicky Boje unbeaten on seven. Cullinan says, mischievously, that his team "might bat on all day tomorrow - if the captain is still there: he loves having a big knock in these circumstances!" More likely is that even Pollock will have had enough by lunch tomorrow, and put the Sri Lankans in to face more of his own not very restful music. He surely wants his six for 30 in the first innings to become a ten-wicket match haul.

Even the Sri Lankans' own bowling star Muttiah Muralitharan did not escape punishment from the South Africans. Neil McKenzie hammered him through mid-wicket for a six and a four off consecutive balls. Muralitharan was taken off after conceding 18 runs in three overs.

Though Murali was more economical later, South Africa made 296 runs in one day's play at the cost of four wickets --- not bad going!

Dilhara Fernando and spinner Russel Arnold got the wickets. Fernando had the classy Jacques Kallis (49) caught in the slips off the second ball of the day while Arnold caught McKenzie off his own bowling, and of course took the key wicket of Boucher just short of his century. It was too little, and, I think, too late.

Mail Cricket Editor