(UDHAYAM, JOHANNESBURG) – Stats highlights from the first day’s play of the Johannesburg Test, where Hashim Amla ended his streak of ten innings without a fifty-plus score.
8 Batsmen who have scored a century in their 100th Test, including Hashim Amla, who did so in Johannesburg on Thursday. The last player to do so was another South Africa batsman, Graeme Smith at The Oval in 2012. The others are: Colin Cowdrey, Javed Miandad, Gordon Greenidge, Alec Stewart, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Ricky Ponting; Ponting scored centuries in both innings of his 100th match. The highest score currently in a player’s 100th Test is Inzamam’s 184 in Bangalore in 2004-05.
10 Consecutive innings without a fifty for Amla. He ended the drought with a century in this innings. His previous fifty-plus score came against New Zealand in Centurion in August last year. Since then, in the ten innings, he averaged 19.60 with three scores in the 40s. He had, in fact, made four consecutive fifty-plus scores before entering the streak of low scores. Amla reached his half-century off 109 balls and took only another 60 balls to get to 100.
26 Centuries for Amla, the most by a South Africa batsman in his first 100 Tests. He went past Smith, who scored his 25th in the hundredth Test. Overall, six batsmen have scored more centuries in their first 100 Tests. Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and Matthew Hayden scored 30 centuries each, the most. Don Bradman (29 in 52 Tests) and Garry Sobers (26 in 93 Tests) scored more hundreds despite not playing 100 Tests.
2 Centuries by Duminy at No. 4 in his last 10 innings, including the 155 against Sri Lanka. Duminy had scored 141 at the WACA previously. Before this, no South Africa batsman scored a century at No. 4 in 21 innings, from December 2014 to November 2016. Amla’s 208 against West Indies in Centurion in December 2014 was the last such knock before Duminy’s innings. The No. 4 in South Africa’s line-up averaged only 31.70 in these 21 innings.
292 Partnership between Amla and Duminy for the third wicket – the fourth-highest for any wicket at the Wanderers. For South Africa, there has been only one bigger stand here: the 330 between Amla and Jacques Kallis against New Zealand in 2007-08.
205 The previous biggest partnership for South Africa for any wicket against Sri Lanka. Kallis and Alviro Petersen put on the partnership in Cape Town in New Year Test of 2012. Amla and Duminy’s partnership of 292 is also the fifth-highest for any wicket against Sri Lanka.
60 Runs scored by JP Duminy in his first five innings at the Wanderers: scores of 17, 29, 7, 2, 5. He scored more than double that aggregate in a single innings in this match. Duminy’s 155 was the sixth century of his career and second against Sri Lanka in nine Test innings.
2012 The previous instance when South Africa’s No. 3 and 4 both scored centuries in the same innings. Amla and Kallis had scored tons on that occasion at the Gabba. South Africa had five such instances between 2010 and 2012, but this match is the first since then.
273 Runs by Duminy in this series – the most he has scored in any series in his career. Before this, his most productive series was his debut one, in Australia in 2008-09, when he made 246 runs. These two series are the only ones in which he has made more than one fifty-plus score. In the first innings of this series, he made 63, before this century in Johannesburg. Currently, he is the second-highest run-getter in the series behind Dean Elgar (308).
4.78 Rangana Herath’s economy rate, currently his second-worst in a Test innings. He conceded 67 runs in 14 overs. His worst is 4.85 against Bangladesh in Dhaka in 2014. Apart from Angelo Mathews, who took his first wicket of the series and gave runs at 2.08, the other three frontline bowlers also had economy rates of more than three and over.
