Philander Takes Six As South Africa Eye Series Victory

South Africa’s patience and perseverance paid off as New Zealand after a lot of hard work gave a position of reasonable strength to collapse from 219 for 3 to 275 all out. Vernon Philander was the biggest menace as he has been in the series so far as he picked up six wickets.

After South Africa had made 474 in the first innings, New Zealand had an uphill task to stave off defeat forget a victory. Starting on an overnight scored of 65 for no loss, New Zealand progressed steadily. While they did lose wickets the flat pitch and short of length bowling helped their cause. Taylor who had been troubled throughout the series by Morne Morkel took one of his bouncers on the wrist, fracturing it in the process. On a pitch that offered little assistance in form of seam movement, South African bowlers persisted, especially Philander who bowled nagging lines outside the off-stump giving away very little. Finally when an opening presented itself, in form Brownlie’s wicket just when the new ball was due, the bowlers made deep inroads. New Zealand’s last five wickets fell for only 33 runs. While almost all of the top six batsmen got starts, none of them made a big score with only Guptil scoring an fifty.

Philander on the way to taking his sixth five wicket hall in seven test matches became the fastest man to 50 wickets in Test cricket. Though New Zealand barely managed to save the follow-on, South Africa rubbed salt into their wounds by scoring 75 runs in the last 15 overs of the day’s play. Southy Africa ended the fourth day of the test match 274 runs ahead.