Amla makes century, De Villiers falls for 88

Amla had been dropped twice, once on 76 by Jimmy Anderson off Joe Root (5-2-12-0) and then on 120 by Nick Compton off Steven Finn (26-3-82-1) but Anderson redeemed himself later on when he managed to hold onto a catch at square leg off Finn to dismiss De Villiers for 88.

Amla’s scored 157 runs, while du Plessis made a 50, his first in the last 10 innings as South Africa still trail England’s score of 629 runs by 276 runs with seven wickets in hand.

“It is a really, really good batting wicket”, Stokes added to ecb.co.uk.

By the time lunch rolled around at Newlands, captain Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers had taken the hosts to 199/2. At the other end, du Plessis reached his first half-century in exactly a year, ending a horror run of ten innings that yielded just 119 runs. “Today we had to really try and manufacture something”.

“We stuck to our guns very well”, said Finn.

England’s problem came from the support cast who dropped both Amla and De Villiers and these misses turned out to be expensive.

De Villiers became the third South African batsman to pass 8,000 runs while Amla, who last made a significant contribution with 208 runs against the West Indies in December 2014, moved past 7,000 runs.

On a featherbed at Newlands, on day three of the second Test against England, Amla reminded everyone of why class is permanent and form is temporary.

“The key now for South Africa is if they get past that follow-on, as it’s highly likely this game will be drawn if they do, but those 400 runs or so are a long way away”.

The all-rounder was merciless after reaching his century off 105 balls with an elegant cover drive for three – his innings comprising 16 fours and one six at that point. – It was the quickest Test double century (163 balls) by an England player, beating Ian Botham’s 220-ball effort in 1982.

That brought Du Plessis, who was also under real pressure, to the crease. “Our bowlers have a wealth of experience in all different conditions and hopefully we can come out tomorrow, utilise a bit of reverse swing, moisture in the pitch and we go from there”.

In spite of their lack of success England bowled a lot better than the scoreboard suggests. England bowled a probing line around off stump but found no lateral movement – even after a ball change 15 minutes into the day – and Amla and de Villiers expertly drew the sting out of the match.

By contrast to the second day, when Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow thrashed 196 runs for England before lunch and 453 runs were scored in the day for the loss of three wickets, it was attritional cricket, with only 212 runs scored in 87 overs.