Graeme Smith and Hashim Amla both hit centuries to take South Africa to a comfortable nine-wicket victory over Australia yesterday to end one of cricket’s most topsy-turvy Test matches.
Amla raced to a 126-ball century before being caught for 112 with his team 14 short of their target of 236.
South Africa captain Smith became the first player in history to score four centuries in winning fourth innings run chases, reaching the mark with a single to level the scores and then hitting the winning run to finish on 101 not out.
Smith and Amla put on 195 for the second wicket in only 184 minutes off 248 balls. The ease of their stroke-play on a sunny morning made a mockery of the previous day’s batting collapses by both teams.
South Africa completed their win before lunch on the third day to take a 1-0 lead in the two-Test series.
Both the speed and decisiveness of the win seemed improbable less than 24 hours earlier when South Africa were bowled out for 96 in their first innings, giving Australia a lead of 188 runs. However, Australia were shot out for 47 to swing the odds back in the home team’s favor.
Smith and Amla started the day on 88 for one and there was an early alarm when Amla, after adding only one to his overnight score of 29, was dropped at first slip by Shane Watson off Ryan Harris. Amla had been dropped off the last ball of the second day’s play by Mike Hussey at gully, also off Harris.
Harris beat Amla again when he struck the batsman on the pads in his next over. He appealed for a LBW decision which was turned down by umpire Billy Doctrove. He asked for a television review, but unlike the second day, when four decisions were overturned in favor of bowlers, replays showed the ball was going down the leg side.
After playing themselves in, Smith and Amla increased the tempo and posted a century partnership off 164 balls. With Amla in particular in aggressive mode, the run rate increased rapidly, before Amla played one extravagant stroke too many and was caught at gully by Australia captain Michael Clarke off Mitchell Johnson.
Harris was the most impressive of the Australia bowlers, but could not take a wicket, while Shane Watson was unable to repeat his heroics of Thursday when he took five for 17 to send South Africa tumbling.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier