Verreynne rules before attrition sets in at St George's Park

Wicketkeepers are weird. Some, like Jack Russell, paint pictures. Others, like David Richardson, start out as lawyers and end up running the ICC. Few retire without gnarled fingers, creaking backs and wobbly knees. One, Kiren More, reduced the great Javed Miandad to a shrieking, leaping caricature. That happened because no wicketkeeper knows how to shut the hell up.

Like Kyle Verreynne, who bellowed his bellicosity in the general direction of the dressingroom at St George's Park on Friday. It was a fearsome, primal noise, which you hear - and feel - when jets fly low at an air show.

The sound Verreynne made was forced out of him by happiness, satisfaction and relief. It was a huge release. Still in the throes of it, he took a bow. Fair enough. He had found a way to fashion a century from the embers of the innings. And was it ever fun to watch. The last lusty jolts of his unbeaten 105, especially.

After stumps, by then becalmed Verreynne told a press conference: "I didn't expect I'd be close to getting a hundred. I thought maybe if I can get 70 and the other guys can contribute 20 or 30 it would be quite a good morning."

Verreynne had fussed over his first 50 for 95 deliveries, and not out of choice. Having come to the crease at 186/5 on Thursday, in the wake of the loss of Temba Bavuma and David Bedingham in the space of 39 deliveries, discipline was needed. By stumps, Ryan Rickelton and Marco Jansen had also gone. What had looked like a dominant day for South Africa while Bavuma and Rickelton shared 133 for the fourth wicket had softened to a meh 269/7.

The total was unmoved when Keshav Maharaj tried to leave the 10th ball of Friday's play, bowled to him by Vishwa Fernando, and was caught behind. At 269/8, whether the South Africans would reach 300 was more pressing than whether Verreynne would score his third century.

But Kagiso Rabada, who invariably looks competent at the crease, had one of his better batting displays. His 23 was only the 21st time in his 102 innings that he made it to 20, and it helped realise 56 for the ninth wicket.

Verreynne faced five balls after Maharaj's dismissal to make it to 50, or when South Africa needed 25 to reach 300. That done, Verreynne and Rabada forged 25 more runs ahead before Asitha Fernando pierced the left-hander's guard with an inswinger and bowled him.

During that stand, Verreynne had hit Vishwa for two fours in an over and Asitha for four fours in another. But he was 19 runs away from three figures when Dane Paterson walked to the middle with the studied indifference that lurks within all proper No. 11s.

Paterson had faced 10 or more balls just twice in his previous eight Test innings, although he wasn't dismissed in three of them. In 203 first-class innings, he had reached 50 once and suffered 35 ducks. He had been not out 61 times.

Did he have what it would take to help Verreynne reach a hundred? The immediate evidence was encouraging: Paterson exhumed Asitha's attempted yorker, and the over was up to leave Verreynne on strike.

"Being nine-down, you're not sure how long the innings is going to carry on," Verreynne said. "Nothing against Patto, but I didn't think that I'd get close to a hundred. Fortunately he stuck around with me long enough and we managed to have quite a valuable partnership."

Verreynne was taking no chances. He hammered Prabath Jayasuriya for six over cover in the next over. Five balls later he put Asitha over the midwicket fence five balls later, and would have been run out for 96 had the throw from mid-on not missed the stumps.

Verreynne rose from his dive, dusted himself off, and smote Asitha's next effort, which was pitched short, for a steepling six over backward square leg. It was less a cricket stroke than barely bridled belligerence made palpable.

Cue the ripping off of his helmet, a giddy rush towards the boundary, and that fearsome, primal noise.

Verreynne's first century, an undefeated 136 in Christchurch in February 2022, was central to one of Test cricket's greatest comebacks. It helped South Africa prevail by 198 runs mere days after New Zealand had won the first Test by an innings and 276. In October this year, Verreynne's 114 in the utterly foreign conditions of Mirpur - his first Test in Asia - helped South Africa claim success by seven wickets.

Those innings were forged in challenging circumstances and so was this; namely that the number of reliable partners dwindled. But, then as now, Verreynne overcame the difficulty in some style to take his team to a total of 358. Of the 17-ball last-wicket partnership of 33, he scored 24 off seven.

A wicket felt likely with every ball of the six overs that Rabada and Jansen bowled to Pathum Nissanka and Dimuth Karunaratne before lunch, and in the first four overs of the second session bowled before Paterson replaced Rabada. Paterson kept the pressure on without threatening as much as the new-ball pair.

But the Lankan openers stood firm until the 10th over after lunch, when Karunaratne leapt at the fourth ball of Rabada's second spell, misread the bounce and was caught behind. Nissanka persevered to share 109 with Dinesh Chandimal and 49 with Angelo Mathews before Maharaj bowled him for 88.

After the morning's and the early afternoon's feverish events, the day's play reverted to type for attritional Test cricket. The wind still blew from the west, and while it was but a whisper in the morning, it grew to gusts of 66 kilometres an hour by the time the sun was sinking over the old grandstand.

By then, it had become apparent that the Duckpond End of the pitch offered more bounce than the Park Drive End. But bowling towards that end also meant toiling into the wind.

It was also apparent that this match would go somewhere slowly for at least the next day's play before hurtling to a finish, as St George's Park Tests tend to do.

What wasn't apparent, as Sri Lanka reached stumps with seven wickets standing, a deficit of 116, and 13 overs away from the prospect of having to face a new ball, was Verreynne's own weirdness as a wicketkeeper. Asked what it might be, he said: "I'm quite a normal guy; nothing too interesting. The only thing is the [red] hair. Other than that, I'm quite bland and simple."

Yeah, right. Tell that to those who saw him bellowing his bellicosity like a low-flying jet at an air show.