After a series victory against New Zealand at home and Australia away, South Africa will be looking to end this year on a high when they take on Sri Lanka in a three Test match series with the first one set to take place today in Port Elizabeth. Sri Lanka have a lot of improvement to do if they are to stand a chance to win this series after having lost six of their last seven Test matches this year.
With AB de Villiers, who is still recovering from an elbow injury and stepping down as captain for South Africa, it will be Faf du Plessis' first game as regular Test captain. Du Plessis will be the side's third captain in the span of one year after Hashim Amla resigned in January. With South Africa picking only 13 players in their squad for this series, their coach Russell Domingo wants his players to step up and cement their place in this team.
"It gives us a few less selection problems and gives the incumbents a sense of security and they can focus really hard on their preparation and not worry too much about selection," he said. "It just makes it a lot clearer and a lot more simplistic. The young players have really come in and stepped up. They are all new players that, a year and a half ago, were playing debut Test matches and now they've become established in the side. That's very pleasing to see" Sky Sports.com quoted the South African coach as saying.
Sri Lanka does not have the best of records in South Africa losing 8 out of 10 matches played there. However, there is still hope for Sri Lanka after they impressed in the last six months. The good news for Sri Lanka is that they will have Angelo Mathews and Dinesh Chandimal back for this test series after the duo recovered from a leg and hand injury respectively. Despite a lot of youngsters being given a chance in this Test series, Sri Lanka's captain Angelo Mathews believes that they will be up for the challenge.
"When Sanga, Mahela and Dilshan retired it created a vacuum in the team, but the youngsters have taken it up well. We saw in the Australia series that the youngsters like Kusal Mendis and Dhananjaya de Silva were standing up. It's great to see them coming through. In Potchefstroom the facilities were very good, so we've had plenty of time to get used to the conditions. The wickets were quite a bit slower than other parts of South Africa. I thought we got the maximum out of the 10 days that we got there" ESPNcricinfo quoted him as saying.
Teams:
South Africa: Faf du Plessis (capt), Kyle Abbott, Hashim Amla, Temba Bavuma, Stephen Cook, Theunis de Bruyn, Quinton de Kock (wk), JP Duminy, Dean Elgar, Kevash Maharaj, Wayne Parnell, Vernon Philander, Kagiso Rabada.
Sri Lanka: Angelo Mathews (capt), Dinesh Chandimal, Kusal Mendis, Kusal Perera (wk), Dimuth Karunaratne, Kaushal Silva, Dhananjaya de Silva, Upul Tharanga, Lahiru Kumara, Vikum Sanjaya, Nuwan Pradeep, Dushmantha Chameera, Suranga Lakmal, Dilruwan Perera, Rangana Herath.
The first Test match between South Africa and Sri Lanka is set to start at 10:00am local time (08:00am GMT, 1:30pm IST)
Where to watch
India and Sri Lanka: TV: Ten 3. Live Streaming: Ten Network
South Africa: TV: SuperSport 3. Live Streaming: SuperSport
UK: TV: Sky Sports2. Live Streaming: Sky Network.
USA: Willow TV
