2 days ago
Teenage wonder boy Pretorius puts Proteas in charge with stunning 153
Lhuan-dre Pretorius showed why Shukri Conrad described him as a 'special' talent, becoming the seventh South African to score a hundred on his Test debut in Bulawayo on Saturday.
In the process the 19-year-old, also became the youngest South African to score a Test century, surpassing the previous record, held by the legendary Graeme Pollock, which he set against Australia in 1964.
Pretorius scored 153 off only 160 balls, rescuing the Proteas from a precarious position of 22/3 when he arrived at the crease. At stumps, the holders of the World Test Championship mace were 418/9, with Corbin Bosch completing his maiden Test hundred in the last over of the day.
It was a remarkable turnaround by the South Africans whose stand-in captain Keshav Maharaj chose to bat, on a pitch he felt would help the seamers early before settling down later in the day.
Maharaj was right, but he would not have anticipated how much his top order would struggle against high quality seam bowling from Blessing Muzarabani and Tanaka Chivanga. The latter picked up the first three wickets to fall, all caught in the slips, all of those dismissals the result of extra bounce Chivanga was able to extract with the new ball.
Pretorius got his innings going with a straight six off the fourth ball he faced followed by a boundary that he thrashed through the covers off left-arm spinner Wellington Masakadza and began changing the impetus of the innings with his aggressive approach.
A mix up with Wiaan Mulder, saw South Africa lose a fourth wicket before lunch, but after the interval Pretorius and his Titans teammate Dewald Brevis, who like Pretorius was making his debut, dominated.
