South Africa would have been happy to get a hundred run lead. 202 runs there, much like getting the moon in the sky. Kyle Verränne made that arrangement for them. With an excellent innings of 114 runs, he took the team to a place where it was difficult to even think of reaching at one time.
A 119-run partnership with Wian Mulder for the seventh wicket added to the script. Where Mulder’s contribution is 54. The rest belongs to Veraenne. The right-handed batsman took the second Test century of his career after crossing the rest of the way with the late order batsmen. Verayenne came into bat for South Africa, who lost 5 wickets before the century. From there he played an excellent innings of 114 runs and took the team to a safe place. The 144-ball innings was brilliant with 14 fours and 2 sixes. At the end of the day, he said that he played the best innings of his career in 22 yards of Mirpur.
“This is definitely the best innings of my Test career. Probably the toughest conditions I’ve ever played. We are not used to playing on a spin track for so long at home. I had to play spin around 90 percent of the time. Everything happened at lightning speed. The way the innings progressed we didn’t get a chance to reset.’
Speaking separately about the century, he said, ‘Considering the moment, conditions and circumstances of the match, such a century was necessary. A tough wicket and a competitive atmosphere combined to make things difficult. This is the most productive innings I have played. The impact of the century can be understood by glancing at the scoreboard. So I am happy. It was my first century in New Zealand. That’s something different. Here’s another one. Definitely feels good.’
Verayenne played 29 sweep shots in the entire innings. Where he got 49 runs. Hit five fours and a six in the slog sweep. Verayenne said former Bangladesh batting coach Ashley Prince had a big influence on his game. Prince is working as South Africa’s batting coach. ‘Uan Mulder and I were talking this morning,’ Verraenne said of him. We were talking to Prince about what can be done to be successful here. He told us something that helped us with the batting. But did not say anything more about the sweep or insist on it.
Where the top-order and middle-order have failed, Verayenne has shown great tenacity in the late order. Talking about his batting plan, Centurion said, ‘Two ways were open, to try and score runs. Two simply fight. We did that with a positive mindset. So I am in a good position. Got a good response from the late order batsmen too.’
Batting in front of the wicket will be difficult, the Proteas batsman said, ‘The wicket was better today than yesterday. The ball was coming into the bat easily. But as the days go by the wicket will become difficult to use. Let’s see what tomorrow holds. Can be tougher than tougher.’
Bangladesh are still trailing by 101 runs with 7 wickets in hand. Batsmen have to fight hard to save this match. Let’s see if Mushfiq, Joy, Liton, Miraz, Zaker can do that.
(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = ”
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));