JO­HAN­NES­BURG – West In­dies dra­mat­i­cal­ly snatched five wick­ets – two to Kyle May­ers in the clos­ing overs – in a stir­ring come­back af­ter tea to turn around their for­tunes against hosts South Africa in the sec­ond Test on Wednes­day.

Left-arm spin­ner Gu­dakesh Motie was the most suc­cess­ful bowler for the Caribbean side, but May­ers struck twice in the span of three balls in suc­ces­sive overs a lit­tle be­fore the close, and the South Africans end­ed the open­ing day of the con­test on 311 for sev­en.

For the sec­ond suc­ces­sive Test, the West In­dies bowlers were un­tidy in the first two ses­sions, and the Pro­teas, led by Aiden Markram and left-hand­ed rook­ie Tony de Zorzi, rat­tled along at four runs an over and were com­fort­ably placed on 247 for two at tea.

Once Ja­son Hold­er got South Africa cap­tain Tem­ba Bavu­ma lbw for 28 of­fer­ing no stroke to a de­liv­ery that moved back in the third over af­ter the break, the fragili­ty of the home team’s mid­dle-or­der bat­ting was again ex­posed.

Motie, re­turn­ing to the side af­ter a low­er-back in­jury side-lined him for the first Test, end­ed the day with three for 75 from 19 overs, in­clud­ing the prized scalps of Markram for the top score of 96 and de Zorzi, play­ing in his sec­ond Test, for a res­olute 85.

But May­ers tilt­ed the bal­ance when he bowled Wiaan Mul­der for 12 with a sharp in­swinger in the third-last over, and got Si­mon Harmer caught be­hind for one, edg­ing a well-pitched leg-cut­ter in the fi­nal over to fin­ish the day with two for 24 from 7.2 overs.

“In the first ses­sion of the game, we were search­ing to find out what was the best length, what was the best line to bowl on the deck,” May­ers told re­porters af­ter play. “Af­ter bowl­ing a few overs, we re­alised then that it was best to try to starve the bats­men of runs.

“They got ahead with the run rate, and we just want­ed to bring it down a bit, and we thought that bring­ing down the run rate would have cre­at­ed more chances, and we did that.”

He added: “It’ still an open game. More than 300 runs on the board in the first in­nings is al­ways good for a bat­ting team, es­pe­cial­ly in these con­di­tions with the ball mov­ing around.

“It’s just for us to lim­it them as much as pos­si­ble un­der 400 to keep the game open. I thought they bat­ted re­al­ly well at the be­gin­ning, but the late strikes brought us back in­to the game.”

May­ers said: “Once you are pa­tient enough in a Test match, you will get the re­wards. If you put the right amount of balls in the right ar­eas for a long pe­ri­od of time, it al­ways gives the bats­man a hard time.

“Against any line-up, I think with our at­tack, once we get it right, I think we have a lot of wick­et-tak­ing de­liv­er­ies, and I think it is just for us to build the pres­sure, and be con­sis­tent.

“Once we do that in be­tween the wick­et-tak­ing de­liv­er­ies, that is the most im­por­tant thing for us. We just need to re­strict the run rate, keep the scor­ing down, and we can take 20 wick­ets with this at­tack that we have.”

Motie made the break­through for the Caribbean side in the fi­nal hour be­fore lunch af­ter the South Africans won the toss and chose to bat on a typ­i­cal­ly dry Wan­der­ers Sta­di­um pitch.

The Guyanese tweak­er got left-hand­ed open­er Dean El­gar when the im­me­di­ate past South Africa cap­tain went for a sweep and was caught at short fine leg for 42 af­ter putting on 76 for the first wick­et with Markram.

For the re­main­der of the morn­ing pe­ri­od, West In­dies were sub­ject­ed to a pe­ri­od of chas­ing leather with Markram en­joy­ing him­self with a vol­ley of strokes, most­ly dri­ves through the off-side.

None of the the vis­i­tors’ bowlers were spared, and Markram reached his 50 from 68 balls with a back-foot dri­ve through cov­er off Ros­ton Chase for the 10th of his 17 bound­aries, and the South Africans reached 133 for one at lunch.

Af­ter the in­ter­val, West In­dies ap­peared to be wait­ing for some­thing to hap­pen, and Markram and de Zorzi in­dulged them­selves to add 116 for the sec­ond wick­et with lit­tle trou­ble.

Even­tu­al­ly some­thing hap­pened for the Caribbean side on the stroke of the af­ter­noon ref­eresh­ments break when Markram tried an ill-ad­vised scoop off Motie and in­stead mis­cued to be caught by Jer­maine Black­wood run­ning to the leg-side from slip to hold a jug­gled catch.

West In­dies con­tin­ued to meet de­fi­ance from de Zorzi, and the 25-year-old, left-han­der reached his 50 from 82 balls when he drove Alzarri Joseph through gul­ly for the sev­enth of his 11 fours, and he put on 56 for third wick­et with Bavu­ma ei­ther side of tea.

Things start­ed to hap­pen for the vis­i­tors af­ter the break when they fi­nal­ly tight­ened up, and Hold­er got Bavu­ma, Motie bowled de Zorzi play­ing for­ward, and left-han­der Ryan Rick­el­ton was caught be­hind off Joseph for 22 be­fore May­ers put a bow on things.

Motie re­placed pac­er Shan­non Gabriel in the West In­dies line-up for the match – and South Africa made four changes, bring­ing Rick­el­ton, Mul­der, Harmer, and Ke­shav Ma­haraj in to re­place Kee­gan Pe­ter­son, An­rich Nort­je, Mar­co Jansen, and Senu­ran Muthusamy.

West In­dies trail 0-1 in the two-Test se­ries af­ter South Africa won the first Test that end­ed last Thurs­day at Cen­tu­ri­on Park in Pre­to­ria by 87 runs.

CMC

Scores:

SOUTH AFRICA 311 for sev­en (Aiden Markram 96, Tony de Zorzi 85, Dean El­gar 42, Tem­ba Bavu­ma 28, Ryan Rick­el­ton 22; Gu­dakesh Motie 3-75, Kyle May­ers 2-24) vs WEST IN­DIES.