South Africa ended the third day at the Queen’s Park Oval in a position of total dominance thanks to the fearsome bowling combination of Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel
The Bulletin by Liam Brickhill12-Jun-2010Close:
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
Dale Steyn picked up for 5 for 29 to reach 200 Test wickets in just his 39th match•AFP
South Africa ended the third day at the Queen’s Park Oval in a position of total dominance thanks to the fearsome bowling combination of Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel, who combined to skittle West Indies for just 102 in their first innings.After Morkel’s opening burst left the hosts’ top order in tatters, Steyn ripped through the middle and lower order to take 5 for 29 and become the fourth fastest bowler to reach 200 Test wickets behind Clarrie Grimmett, Dennis Lillee and Waqar Younis. Graeme Smith gave his bowlers a rest after their hard work, choosing not to enforce the follow-on, and by the close he had found the form that had eluded him on the tour thus far to take South Africa to 155 for 2 with an unbeaten 79, a lead of 405.Morkel bowled with great effort to extract life from a slow, low pitch and bully the top order from the crease in the morning session, reducing West Indies to 12 for 3 as Travis Dowlin, Brendan Nash and Chris Gayle were removed with back-of-a-length deliveries.Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Narsingh Deonarine rallied briefly with a 59-run fourth-wicket stand, but Steyn then tore through the middle order, reverse-swinging the ball at high pace as six wickets fell for just four runs in 28 deliveries. Denesh Ramdin showed some pluck as he took West Indies’ score past 100 in a 27-run partnership with No. 11 Nelon Pascal, but Jacques Kallis then returned for a second spell and wrapped up the innings with the wicket of the tailender.South Africa were in control of the game within the first hour, as Morkel bowled with discipline and patience and found pace and alarming bounce off a placid pitch. Dowlin had stern questions asked of his technique against the short ball, and the whereabouts of his off stump, before he lost patience and pushed at one that he should have left.Morkel made it two wickets in two balls when he had Brendan Nash caught behind off the glove with the first delivery of his next over. Umpire Steve Davis didn’t think he had got anything on it, but the South Africans were convinced and asked for a referral, upon which Davis’s decision was overturned. With the first ball of his next over Morkel got the wicket that South Africa really wanted, as Chris Gayle went to pull a back-of-a-length delivery that wasn’t quite short enough for the shot and the resulting inside edge cannoned into his stumps to put West Indies in serious trouble at 12 for 3.With Morkel and Steyn taken off after their opening spells, Chanderpaul and Deonarine began to settle and took a particular liking to Paul Harris, who bowled six unsuccessful overs for 25 runs. They managed to weather another short burst from the opening pair before lunch, but when they returned, refreshed after the break, West Indies’ capitulation was quick in coming. The partnership was broken as Steyn went round the wicket and sent down a brutal bouncer at Chanderpaul, who gloved an easy looping catch to Mark Boucher.Dwayne Bravo, too, was bounced out shortly afterwards, although in his case it was a lack of bounce that contributed to the dismissal. Morkel dug one in halfway down and Bravo, expecting the ball to rear up at him, crouched and turned his head away but the ball kept low and flicked the glove on its way through.In a sustained assault of fast bowling of the highest standard, Deonarine was next, shouldering arms to a delivery that reversed in to him from around the wicket to have his stumps splayed. Shane Shillingford fell to the very next ball as Steyn continued to find devilishly late movement at high pace and the batsman was struck on the pad right in front of the wicket.Ramdin managed to survive the hat-trick ball – though it was wide of off stump and he flashed wildly at it – but three balls later Steyn reached the 200-wicket milestone by beating Sulieman Benn for both pace and movement to rattle his stumps.His fifth wicket came just two balls later, as Ravi Rampaul – like Deonarine before him – failed to pick up the reverse swing as Steyn came round the wicket and he left a ball that clattered into his off stump. With that, West Indies were 75 for 9 and Steyn’s four overs since the lunch break had yielded five wickets, for the cost of just four runs.When Ramdin took three boundaries off his 14th over, Steyn was pulled out of the attack, but the fightback was a brief one as Kallis nipped Nelon Pascal out in the second over of his spell. Deciding against the follow-on, Smith and Alviro Petersen put on 56 without much discomfort despite the fact that the pitch was beginning to exhibit huge variations in bounce.After Petersen was trapped in front of his stumps by Benn for 22, Hashim Amla suffered his second failure of the game, driving Shillingford uppishly into the hands of a diving Deonarine in the covers to reduce South Africa to 79 for 2.But Smith fought to a half-century off 78 balls and Kallis was also in belligerent mood, his first boundary a massive six over long-on off Shillingford. He took South Africa’s lead past 400 with a savage pull off Pascal before fading light forced the players from the field.