South Africa are in a commanding position after Day 2 of the 2nd Test against Pakistan, after setting a first-innings total of 615.
It was a beautiful sunny Saturday on Day 2 of the New Year’s Test at Newlands.
South Africa started the day on 316-4 with the dangerous Ryan Rickelton still at the crease. David Bedingham joined him at the other end with South Africa wanting to pick up where they left off by posting as many runs on the board as possible.
During the first session, Rickelton and Verreynne formed a good partnership, with the former scoring his double hundred and the latter scoring his half-century.
Rickelton is the first South African player to score a double hundred since 2016. The last player to do this was Hashim Amla back in 2016 against England. Rickelton also became the third-highest-scoring Protea in South Africa and posted the fourth-highest score on South African shores.
After lunch, Verreynne also managed to get his 100 which made him the third player of South Africa’s innings to get a century. Soon after, the wicket Verreynne fell. They managed to build a partnership of 148 from 222 balls.
Marco Jansen then came in and later picked up a half-century, the third of his career.
The wicket of Rickelton finally came at 15:00 with him scoring 259. It makes him the highest-scoring South African at Newlands beating Herschelle Gibbs’ record of 228. He also became the second-highest scorer at Newlands, behind just Stephen Flemming who scored 262 in 2006.
Because of South Africa’s outstanding batting, Pakistan became the first team to concede 3 individual scores of 250-plus in a single season.
South Africa finished on 615 all out, with the star batters being Ryan Rickelton (259), Temba Bavuma (106), Kyle Verreynne (100) and Marco Jansen (62).
It’s the first time South Africa has scored more than 600 since 2020.
South Africa came out firing as they took 3 wickets in the last session of the day, Rabada taking two and Jansen taking one. This placed them in a very comfortable position heading into day three of the Test.
Pakistan ended the day on 64-3.
