Theunis de Bruyn completed a chanceless maiden double century to put South Africa A in a powerful position on day two of the first unofficial four-day Test match against the England Lions at Boland Park.As soon as he reached the career landmark which coincided with taking the total past 500, Rory Kleinveldt declared the innings closed at 504/8, leaving his bowlers with a maximum 48 overs to make inroads into the England top-order.
By the close the visitors had responded with 169/3 to cut the deficit to 335 runs.
A remarkable feature of De Bruyn’s innings was the relatively small number of balls to which he did not offer a stroke as a high proportion of his runs came in boundaries (202 off 275 balls, 30 fours). It was his second first-class century with his first having come on debut less than a year ago for Northerns against Namibia at Windhoek.
This is only his 10th first-class match and he has already made 908 runs at an average of 53.4. It is as spectacular a start as anybody could hope to make to his career.
Liam Plunkett (4/91 in 26 overs) and Mark Wood (2/99 in 30), who shared 6 of the 8 wickets to fall between them, were the pick of the England attack.
England looked like making a runaway start to their reply as they hit 11 boundaries in the first 9 overs in taking the total past 50 with Sam Robson, the current England Test incumbent opening batsman, being the main contributor.
But the South Africans gradually got into the contest with Kleinveldt and Morris taking three wickets between them. It should have been four as Jonathan Trott was dropped behind the stumps in the tea over off Ryan McLaren with only 7 runs to his credit.
The latter put in a superb spell that straddled the tea interval, bowling three successive maidens. It would have been four had he not bowled a no ball.
With three wickets down for 67 at the end of the 14th over there was an urgent need for England consolidation which was provided by Trott and James Vince who added 50 runs for the fourth wicket off 145 balls with only four boundaries. As the stats suggest it was heavy going but it was what was needed to restore the innings to an even keel.
While Trott continued to play the anchor role, Vince started to flourish, hitting a succession of classy drives to the boundary. Trott reached his half-century off 108 balls (6 fours). The 100 partnership followed off 205 balls with the second 50 coming off only 60 balls.
James Buttler
As the editor of World Cricket Badger he is intent on building the website to give quality coverage of the domestic game around the world.
He is also the presenter of the Cricket Badger Radio Show on Radio Yorkshire every Tuesday evening between 7-9pm UK time.
James was the full-time Media Manager at Yorkshire County Cricket Club between 2007 and 2010.
James is a published author, a writer/video contributor to many cricket publications and a complete cricket badger!
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