Tons of runs for SA

West Indies played ball for 15 of the deliveries bowled on the first day of the Test series against SA at Centurion yesterday. Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers took superb care of the following 454.

They pulled the innings back from the brink of 57/3 and pushed it to 340/3 at stumps. Amla scored 133 not out, De Villiers made an undefeated 141, and they will resume their partnership today on 283 - SA's highest for the fourth wicket against any opponents.

As days go, yesterday was up there with the kind of Highveld thunderstorm that would have whisked the Windies out of harm's way. Unhappily for them, the best the weather could deliver was drizzle that delayed the start by half an hour.

But there was plenty of thunder and lightning on the pitch. For a while after lunch, Amla and De Villiers seemed to abandon the bigger picture of the match in favour of their own game - who could play the most audacious stroke?

De Villiers drove Sulieman Benn for four through a gap at cover that was barely big enough to accommodate a pizza box. Amla, also facing the left-arm spinner, found the space and the timing to scold a full delivery swiftly to the square leg ropes.

The closest West Indies came to separating them came four balls after lunch with SA on 98/3, when Kemar Roach rattled Amla's off-stump without dislodging a bail.

Until then, the tide had flowed one way and then the other.

Denesh Ramdin won the toss and, under sweaty clouds, either inserted SA or refused to bat - your call. But the fact that, by then, the Windies had picked a spinner and SA had filled their quiver with quicks suggests the latter.

Having been given what should have been an advantage, the ineffective Jerome Taylor and the inconsistent Sheldon Cottrell wasted the new ball and allowed Alviro Petersen and Dean Elgar to raise 50 off 60 balls, 36 of those runs coming in boundaries.

But SA would not run away with the game quite so easily - Petersen, Elgar and Faf du Plessis were all removed in the space of 15 balls while the total remained stuck on 57.

Roach straightened deliveries to Petersen and Du Plessis to have them caught at first slip and gully, and Elgar could have hammered a short, wide ball from Cottrell anywhere. Instead, he drilled it into gully's hands.

Taylor never threatened and Cottrell, tall and slingy and equipped to make matters awkward for batsmen with his left arm sweeping through from a sloping angle, did not threaten often enough. Benn was tight and found bounce, but he also did not trouble batsmen consistently.

The exception was Roach, who remained tidy and testy in the face of SA's superiority. However, after tea he turned an ankle while bowling his 16th over, and left the field.

Unless he returns today, West Indies' only chance of staying in the game will have gone with him.