Zimbabwe were bowled out twice on Wednesday as South Africa swept to an easy victory by an innings and 120 runs as the inaugural four-day Test finished inside two days at St George\u2019s Park.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe were dismissed for 68 runs in their first innings and then 121 in their follow-on in reply to South Africa\u2019s 309-9 declared.<\/p>\n
The one-off Test ended inside five sessions as the gulf in ability between the two neighbours was cruelly exposed.<\/p>\n
Morne Morkel was the destroyer-in-chief in Zimbabwe\u2019s first innings with figures of 5-21, as nightwatchman Kyle Jarvis top scored with 23 off 50 balls. Debutant Ryan Burl, who added 16, was the only other Zimbabwean batsman to get to double figures.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe, who are bottom of the 10-team Test rankings, started the second day reeling on 30-4 after being put into bat for the last hour of the first day of the first day-night Test played in South Africa and struggled with the pink ball in unfamiliar conditions.<\/p>\n
They did show some resistance at the start of their second innings but once their first wicket fell on 51, when Chamu Chibhabha was caught behind, there followed a steady procession of batsmen to the crease as Keshav Maharaj took 5-59 and Andile Phehlukwayo returned figures of 3-13.<\/p>\n
All Zimbabwe\u2019s second innings wickets fell in a single session between the tea and dinner break. Craig Ervine was their top second innings scorer with 23 runs.<\/p>\n
South Africa won the toss and batted first on Tuesday with Aiden Markram scoring 125 and AB de Villiers 53 on his return to the Test arena after a hiatus of almost two years.<\/p>\n
The four-day Test is the first since the International Cricket Council tweaked regulations to give some of the weaker nations a more sporting chance, in the wake of Afghanistan and Ireland being granted Test status.<\/p>\n
The one-off game against Zimbabwe was also supposed to provide the home team with preparation for their three-Test series against top ranked side India, which begins next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zimbabwe were bowled out twice on Wednesday as South Africa swept to an easy victory by an innings and 120 runs as the inaugural four-day Test finished inside two days at St George\u2019s Park. Zimbabwe were dismissed for 68 runs in their first innings and then 121 in their follow-on in reply to South Africa\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16164,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16165,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16162\/revisions\/16165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}