SA must dig deeper

At 4.22pm yesterday, a stray dog wandered onto the outfield, snuffled at a spot near the cover boundary and started digging a hole.

Just then, AB de Villiers speared a delivery square through the off side. For a moment, the ball might have hit the dog. Happily, it sped past, followed by a fielder. Only once the boundary had been scored did the dog bother to look up.

"This hole will need to be much deeper," it seemed to say with a dismissive glance over its shoulder, "if you are to bury Sri Lanka here."

In the nine overs that remained, the Proteas scored 22 runs and lost two wickets to reach stumps on 268/5. At tea, they had been 194/1. The dog would have been right.

Dean Elgar's gutsy 103, the first Test century by a South African opener in Sri Lanka, and Faf du Plessis's 80 set the visitors' tails wagging. But they will have to dig the hole deeper to bury Sri Lanka.

"We would have loved to be one down or three down, but such is the nature of the beast that we're five down," Elgar said. "But we still have batsmen in the shed."

Then, if South Africa's quicks don't get far on a pitch bespoke for spin, it will be up to Imran Tahir, JP Duminy and Elgar to do the business.

Elgar, whose silky square drive and a late cut played so deftly, delivered an innings of more pomp and circumstance than Du Plessis.

The latter faced 51 balls before hitting his first boundary, took 29 deliveries to score another run and spent the next 29 balls on 19 not out. But in the nine balls that followed him reaching 20, Du Plessis drilled two consecutive fours and a six.

Elgar never went more than 26 balls between boundaries, much less singles, and leapt from 40 to his half-century in four deliveries with a six and a four. Fifteen minutes before tea, he slammed a six down the ground to go to his 100.

He then drew a finger across his top lip and smiled. In the dressing room, South Africa's stats man Prasanna Agoram reached for his razor. "I don't think people liked that moustache of his, so I told him that if I got a 100 in this Test he must shave it off," Elgar said.

At times it seemed Elgar had more trouble with the heat than the bowlers. He spent time on his haunches at the non-striker's end and found a way to save energy by signalling for water and fresh gloves all in one elaborate sweep of a sweaty forearm.

He took only three singles off the last 23 balls of his innings, which ended with a weary slash outside the off-stump to Suranga Lakmal and a catch by wicketkeeper Dinesh Chandimal.

That brought Hashim Amla to the crease for his first innings as a Test captain. He spent 37 minutes and 36 balls acclimatising, a task he seemed to have completed when he flicked Rangana Herath past the man at mid-wicket and to the boundary with a matador's grace and precision.

Two balls later, Amla lifted an innocuous delivery straight to extra cover. Then Du Plessis fell to a sharp catch at short leg by Kaushal Silva and AB de Villiers played on to Suranga Lakmal.

Every dog day has its afternoon.

Scorecard

Sri Lanka vs South Africa

First Test in Galle

South Africa first innings

A Petersen lbw b D Perera 34

D Elgar c D Chandimal b S Lakmal 103

F du Plessis c K Silva b D Perera 80

H Amla c D Perera b R Herath 11

AB de Villiers b S Lakmal 21

Q de Kock not out 17

D Steyn not out 0

Extras (2lb) 2

Total (for five wickets after 91 overs) 268

Falls: 1/70 2/195 3/220 4/246 5/266

Bowling: S Lakmal 16-6-29-2, S Eranga 9-4-32-0, R Herath 37-7-95-1, A Mathews 2-0-10-0, D Perera 27-3-100-2.

• At stumps, day one.