Sri Lanka were struggling on a long southern-hemisphere tour, losing Test series 0-1 in New Zealand and 0-2 in Australia. The selectors decided to jettison Dinesh Chandimal as captain and install Dimuth Karunaratne for the two Tests in South Africa in February 2019.

Dimuth Karunaratne, Sri Lanka captain: When I was made captain, I hadn't even been vice-captain. It was a bit of a shock. We'd just lost back-to-back series. The players were quite unmotivated, and the feeling in the camp was that South Africa was going to be a tough tour. We'd lost some key players as well. Angelo [Mathews] got injured, Chandimal got dropped. It was a pretty young set, so we had serious doubts.

Dale Steyn, South Africa fast bowler: I think if any team from the subcontinent came, we always felt like we had the edge over them just because of the bounce - it catches you a bit off guard. That's how you get the edges. That's how the ball carries to gully.

I think when you're playing at home against a team that's unfamiliar with your conditions, you straight away think you've got the upper hand.

South Africa had lost four of the six matches they had played in Durban since 2010, including one to Sri Lanka.

Vernon Philander, South Africa fast bowler: I wouldn't say it was a bogey venue, per se, but we'd been known to be slow starters at the time. I can point to some Australia series as well, where we only picked up momentum as the series went on. For us, Durban was just another venue.

"We had given our players that freedom. I'd said that if you can whack the first ball itself, you should go for it" Dimuth Karunaratne on Sri Lanka's batting approach in Durban

Sri Lanka's problems were more substantial, however. There was serious pressure on coach Chandika Hathurusinghe, whom the board was seeking to sack. They had not won a single match - out of eight across formats - for two months by that stage.

Chandika Hathurusinghe, Sri Lanka coach: I'm not saying the players are not playing for the team, but human nature is such that when uncertainty comes, you don't know what to do. There's no direction. We can't plan. We can't give them challenges. They can't think about what they need to do. It's not that they don't want to play for the team. They are trying. But in any high-performance environment, successful teams have direction, strong leadership and continuity.

Karunaratne: The environment in the team was terrible. There was blame being thrown at certain people for the defeats, as often happens after defeats. What I had wanted was to correct that and gather our players together. That's what I did first - talked to the team. And I got a lot of support because it was a fresh group, in a sense. We tried to go to dinner together and move together as a team as much as possible.

Although Hathu aiya had that pressure on him, I don't think he put it on us at all. He backed me a lot. Maybe because it was my first as captain. When I asked for something, he was very supportive. I think a lot of people, including the coaches, were thinking that because we were such underdogs, it's not that big a deal if we lose this as well. The Sri Lanka board was also behind me, so that helped also.

Meanwhile, South Africa had decked Pakistan 3-0 in Tests earlier that summer, though Steyn was coming back from long injury layoffs.

Steyn: I felt like I was bowling fast against Pakistan, I felt like everything was clicking, but I just wasn't getting those wickets.

Vishwa Fernando set up the Test with a career-best match haul of 8 for 133. His victims included Dean Elgar, Hashim Amla, Faf du Plessis and Aiden Markram © AFP

On the first morning in Durban, Sri Lanka won the toss and chose to bowl, dismissing South Africa for 235.

Philander: I remember it was overcast, and it [the ball] was moving around because there was a bit of grass as well, and their bowlers were asking all the right questions.

Karunaratne: We knew the pitch in Durban would turn as the game went on and get slower. But the problem we had was their fast bowlers - Steyn, Kagiso Rabada, Philander, and Duanne Olivier. Handling that pace was our biggest problem. We thought if we put some runs on the board, we have a chance of staying in the game. We knew we could play spin well, because we had played on bigger-turning pitches.

What we wanted with our pace attack was to try and get a few early wickets. If we had batted first and lost a few wickets, we were into an inexperienced middle order. Oshada Fernando [at No. 3] was making his debut.

Vishwa Fernando got us some early wickets, and he bowled a great spell to Dean Elgar, Aiden Markram and Hashim Amla. He barely gave them a chance to lift their bats.

Vishwa Fernando, Sri Lanka fast bowler: I'd known that South Africa's pitches helped quicks. I hadn't come here even on a Sri Lanka A tour, but we did watch videos of previous Durban Tests. I had belief that I could do something with the new ball. In the first over itself, I knew it was helping me. They had some of the best batsmen in the world in their top order, so it's a big thing that I was able to get them out. I got the wicket of Elgar in the first over itself, and I think that confidence carried me right through the Test.

Philander: Quinton de Kock hit 80 for us and gave the innings that counter-punch. And that got us to a good total because the ball was going around corners.

"There were times where I think the guys wanted to bowl a bouncer to get a dot ball, and he'd ramp it to third man, or play a little tennis-ball shot to keep the ball down, which was really ridiculous" Vernon Philander on Kusal Perera's innings

Karunaratne: De Kock was the biggest threat to us in that series, mainly because he scores so quickly. But getting them out for 235 made us feel quite confident. But we also knew their bowling line-up is much better than ours. If they are getting out to us for 230-odd, we had that doubt as to how we would go against the likes of Steyn, Philander and Rabada. The thing that Lahiru Thirimanne [Karunaratne's opening partner] talked about was taking the shine off the ball.

Philander: I remember rolling them for something below our score - 191? I think Dale picked up four wickets, I picked up a couple, and Rabada got a couple.

Steyn: In that match I think I was getting my game back in all those little facets where I was able to somehow build to getting a wicket. I actually think I had a five-for on the cards, and Dean Elgar dropped one at gully. But that's not the end of the world. I think a four-for is as good as a hundred anyway. That first innings was hitting the right things for me.

In Sri Lanka's total of 191, middle-order batter Kusal Perera top-scored with 51 off 63 balls.

Karunaratne: We had given KJ [Kusal Perera is known as Kusal Janith within the team] that freedom. We knew he wasn't someone who could stay at the wicket and play. He goes for his shots. We knew he could be impactful. We had given our players that freedom. I'd said that if you can whack the first ball itself, you should go for it.

Steyn: I found that whenever we bowled in the right place, he had a lot of plays-and-misses and a lot of edges. But whenever you got it slightly wrong and overpitched, he would just ping it off the middle of the bat. Then we started to spread the field a little bit to try and cater for that. So if you did bowl a good ball, he might nick it. And if you bowled, like, a semi-bad ball, instead of going for four or six, there was a chance of getting him caught.

I think I actually got him caught off the slower ball, which was strange, because how often do you get guys slogging one in Test matches? I always try to get my wickets through caught behind, bowled, through smart thinking. But I remember saying something to him like: "I've got you now. You can't just keep slogging. I've worked you out now."

Perera: "When I was batting with the tail, I knew we couldn't win this match by just scoring singles. When the time felt right for me, I took my chances" © Getty Images

Karunaratne: I think Lasith Embuldeniya [at No. 9] also contributed a little innings [24 off 63 balls]. We could only get 191, but we felt we'd competed.

South Africa batted better in the second innings but couldn't fully pull away from Sri Lanka. Faf du Plessis made 90 and de Kock scored another half-century in a total of 259.

Karunaratne: De Kock scores quickly, du Plessis scored runs as well, but he stays in the wicket a bit and that we can manage. We felt that the moment we got one of them out, we had a chance. We learned a thing or two from England the previous year when they beat us 3-0 at home. From the first ball of those innings, they had men out in the deep to stop us from scoring, they had catching fielders in, and they bowled very tight. I applied that knowledge in South Africa. Even if we give away singles, the pitches will keep us in the hunt for wickets.

Steyn: I do remember frustratedly thinking in that [South Africa] innings that there were one or two soft dismissals, and that we could have pushed another 30-40 runs, especially because the third innings was probably the best time to bat. Later in the game, when they were nine down in the fourth innings, I thought they would just be learnings for the next match, so we didn't make those same mistakes (laughs).

Karunaratne: Embuldeniya [the 22-year-old left-arm spinner], on debut, did extremely well. I told him to bowl wicket to wicket and to not bowl any loose balls. I told him that in the first innings, his job was to keep it tight, but that he might have a chance to get wickets in the second [he took 5 for 66]. He did that perfectly - he did exactly what the team needed from him on debut. His lines and areas were outstanding. I let him have the field he wanted and he bowled without fear.

Shortly before tea on day three, South Africa set Sri Lanka a target of 304.

Karunaratne: We didn't keep it in our heads that we absolutely had to hit 304. We just thought about enjoying ourselves at the crease and to play without a lot of pressure. When Lahiru Thirimanne and I opened the innings, we just wanted to get rid of the shine on the ball. I did feel as if the second innings was easier than the first, in terms of batting. So I told him: if you get some width or a loose ball, make sure you hit it. Usually the wisdom overseas is to let the ones outside the line of off stump go, but we tried to hit those. We batted more positively.

"Perera was quite smart. He could hold strike, hold strike, hold strike, and then you bring the field in and he'd smack a boundary and also still manage to get a single" Dale Steyn

Philander: We had them in trouble again early on, at 50-something for 3. But then I had to leave the field with some discomfort, and later that night the scan revealed a grade-two tear to my left hamstring.

Perera had arrived at the crease with the score on 52 for 3, late on the third day, and he began the following day on a score of 12. Philander did not take the field on day four.

Kusal Perera, Sri Lanka batter: I didn't have any big plan when I started the day. I just tried to do what I could. I knew what my strengths were and I tried to play to them. In places like these, it's never going to be easy, like in Sri Lanka. These bowlers are all top five in the world. They don't give you any room, and they have so much experience. There were very few loose balls.

Karunaratne: No one thought that KJ would do something that incredible. We know he plays a lot of shots, but he can be careless. He could score a beautiful 60 or 70 and then throw it away. I saw him at the time as a character who doesn't dream of those big scores.

In the tenth over on day four, Steyn struck twice, getting Oshada Fernando caught in the slips before having Niroshan Dickwella caught and bowled. Sri Lanka were 110 for 5, still 194 runs short.

Steyn: Five wickets a game is what I wanted to average, so getting one wicket in that innings was good, but getting six [overall] is amazing.

As Perera went about building his innings, he was joined in a 96-run partnership by Dhananjaya de Silva. During this period, Perera was tested repeatedly with short deliveries. He had been hit on the helmet and left the field concussed in the previous series in Australia.

Karunaratne: I think that partnership with Dhananjaya was the turning point in that chase. We had in our heads whether we could score those runs, but we tried to give the batters freedom to enjoy themselves - if there was a ball there to hit, hit it.

Perera: "When you come to a country like this, if someone tells you that you can bat without getting hit, that's a lie. We have to be smart about it" Anesh Debiky / © Getty Images

Steyn: It's always a conversation with the opposition batters when they come here - test them on the short ball. As bowlers, you tend to prey on the guy's last five to ten dismissals. And that there becomes a pattern of play.

Philander: When you pitch the ball up to Perera, he's got a beautiful swing of the blade, so he's always going to put seamers under pressure when the ball's been pitched up. And I think it's part of our armoury in South Africa to use short deliveries, especially against players from the subcontinent. I remember Dale trying to utilise that tactic. I think Kusal swayed and left a few early on, but once he got comfortable, he actually started taking them on with no intent of keeping it down. He was going big. And obviously, as a bowler, when you get dispatched for a couple of maximums, you have to alter your plans.

Karunaratne: My game plan is to leave the short ball as much as possible. KJ doesn't find it easy to duck. He had said even in Australia that if he gets short balls, he will try to score off them. And then he got concussed.

But although he got hit, he didn't change his game plan. He went into the next tour and played the same way. If that happened to someone like me, I'd have doubts. In Australia, when I got hit and went to hospital, the first ball I got on my return was a bouncer. We know we're not in a comfort zone there, and the bowlers are not about to take pity on us. I think KJ wanted to prove to everyone that he can play it well.

Perera: On these tracks, if you're not willing to wear balls on the body, you might as well not be batting. I don't know how many times I got hit - honestly, I've lost count. But you can't think about those things while you are batting. In Sri Lanka the fastest you get is 130-140kph. Here you get balls that are 150kph. When you come to a country like this, if someone tells you that you can bat without getting hit, that's a lie. We have to be smart about it.

Steyn: We thought, okay, we could fool him into thinking the short ball is coming and then go full. We knew he wasn't really good on the drive. He kind of plays with that open blade, so we'd have guys in the slips and the gully. I think at one stage we may have even had a catching third man. We hoped he'd go at it and get a thick edge.

"Sanath Jayasuriya is the only other batsman I've seen who can hit those shots off those balls. I thought as long as I stay here, he [Kusal Perera] will win it" Vishwa Fernando on Perera's sixes off Steyn

But when we went full, he either missed it completely or ended up hitting us through point and extra cover. There were a lot of bad balls in between. Sometimes you bowl a bad ball and you think you'll get away with it, but he hit it for four, so the runs kept coming. It would be good ball, good ball, good ball, boundary, boundary. And then that is difficult to stop.

Philander: That partnership with Dhananjaya really gave Kusal the momentum. He was a bit scratchy at the start because the ball was moving around, but I remember just before lunch on day four, he started loosening up and taking the game to our seamers. It basically put us on the back foot.

De Silva was dismissed with Sri Lanka still needing 98 and four wickets remaining. Then Suranga Lakmal was out next ball.

Karunaratne: One thing KJ said to me in a break was that he found Steyn easy to handle! I had never heard anyone say that. This was a fast bowler who had been No. 1 for years and was one of the best ever. I learned KJ had been telling his partners to give the strike to him when Steyn was bowling. He had that kind of ridiculous confidence at that point.

Steyn: With the tail in, we tried to get the tailender on strike. Spread the field, give the batter his opportunity to just get one. But Perera was quite smart. He could hold strike, hold strike, hold strike, and then you'd bring the field in and he'd smack a boundary and somehow still manage to get a single.

Debutant spinner Lasith Embuldeniya took a five-for to restrict South Africa to 259 in the second innings © AFP

South Africa ripped through the tail nonetheless, and had 77 runs to defend when No. 11 Vishwa Fernando came to the crease. This was in the 70th over of Sri Lanka's innings, so there were a little more than ten overs until the second new ball became available.

Karunaratne: We knew Vishwa couldn't bat that well, especially against that pace attack, so the instructions were very much to give KJ the strike as much as possible and survive the one or two balls you will get. Protect your stumps and try to get out of the way of the short ones. Don't try to pull or play any shots. KJ will do the rest. Give your absolute best to surviving - we won't be on your case if you fail.

Vishwa: I didn't have my pads on when Dhananjaya and Kusal were batting. When they were batting together, I had a lot of hope we could win. South Africa's quicks had stopped bowling, and they had gone to spin. But then Dhananjaya and Lakmal got out and I had to start putting my pads on. I was pretty sad, to be honest. I felt like we had too many runs to get and too few wickets. They had a 75-80% chance to win. But then I got to the middle and I felt differently. I told Kusal aiya straight away that I wasn't going to give away my wicket.

Perera: I didn't even look at the scoreboard when Vishwa came in. I just tried to play it over by over and get us close, little by little. Vishwa told me: "I'll hit the ball with my body, if nothing else. You do what you can, Kusal aiya." I took a lot of strength from that. Without any fear I took the single and gave the strike to him.

Vishwa: (Laughs) Yes, I did tell him that. My job was to protect my wicket, not to score runs, so I told him: You score the runs, let's get ten runs closer, and another ten, and take it from there.

Karunaratne: Vishwa got hit a few times. You could tell from the way he was running between the wickets how much effort he was putting in.

"With the second new ball due, we didn't have a lot of hope about Vishwa. We were just willing him to survive. Every ball he was playing was a heart attack for us" Karunaratne on watching the chase from the dressing room

Vishwa: I wasn't afraid that I would get hit. I was afraid I would lose my wicket. Kusal aiya can't play the whole over. I had to bat one or two balls at least. There was a lot of pressure. The fast bowlers were having a go at me and the close fielders were having a go at me. I did say a few things back.

Karunaratne: There was one time when Faf du Plessis tried to throw down the stumps and Vishwa put in a massive dive. He really wanted to stay at the wicket. "As long as KJ is there, I'll be there too" was his mindset.

Steyn: That [run-out attempt] came off my bowling. It was almost a dropped catch, but it might have bounced just short. There were fielders standing in disbelief like: "How could this have happened?" And while they were standing there, Kusal just took off for this run, and there was this overthrow that went to the boundary [these were five of Vishwa's eventual six runs]. It just shows that the pressure was on.

Philander: That period was frustrating. I think also because Kusal played it so well. Very often when you find yourself in those kinds of scenarios, you know teams would be able to target the No. 11. But I think just the way Kusal was able to control that portion of the innings was phenomenal. There were times where I think the guys wanted to bowl a bouncer to get a dot ball, and he'd ramp it to third man, or play a little tennis-ball shot to keep the ball down, which was really ridiculous.

South Africa had one ace left. The second new ball became available with 42 runs still left to get. They didn't take it immediately, but opted for it as soon as they get the No. 11 on strike.

Steyn: There was even a conversation for a second to say: "Should we continue with the older ball?" The older ball is a bit softer and it's a little bit more difficult for Perera to hit boundaries with. And then the other conversations came up that if we get an opportunity to bowl at the tailender, we need this new ball. So there was some thinking, but there was also confusion.

But I remember KG [Rabada] and myself taking the new ball and just thinking: one of these balls has got to have his number on it.

Dale Steyn: "It was one of those innings that knocked me backwards, physically knocked me backwards. Some other innings you just say, 'That's well played.' But this one hit me hard" Anesh Debiky / © AFP/Getty Images

Vishwa: There was crazy pressure. I can't put that into words. I'm a bowler, not a batsman, so I was massively worried. But I was intent that I wasn't going to throw it away. If I'd played a dumb shot or backed away from the wicket and gotten out, that would have been wrong. But if I got out defending and they nicked me off or something, I could live with myself. Once they took the second new ball, Kusal aiya and I didn't even talk about it, because there's nothing to do. But I think that although he was earlier happy to let me bat two balls in an over, he tried to give me only one ball each.

Karunaratne: With the second new ball due, we didn't have a lot of hope about Vishwa. We were all sitting together and just willing him to survive. Every ball he was playing was a heart attack for us. And the more the required runs went down, the more tense it became. There was one ball that went very close to his stumps, and all our hands went to our heads. I think that was the toughest period I've ever had in a dressing room. For 30-40 minutes, we were all feeling incredible pressure. It felt like an oven, and we were yelling for every run, trying to support them as much as we could.

Vishwa: Sometimes when a bowler bowls, he'll come and give you a stare. I've done that plenty of times to batsmen and they've looked away. I didn't want to give the South Africa bowlers that satisfaction. I stared back. I didn't want to show that I was afraid. I wanted them to know I wouldn't throw away my wicket.

Perera would finish the match with some of the most memorable boundaries of the innings, twice launching Steyn for sixes to deep square leg, and also hitting Rabada for boundaries.

Steyn: At that point the pitch had slowed down and the ball was coming on nicely. I think Perera scored those 30 runs in three or four overs. It was so fast. We took the new ball and the game was over just like that.

"I definitely couldn't play an innings like that. I don't know - even Sanga and Mahela probably couldn't do that kind of job with the tail" Karunaratne on Perera's 153 not out

Karunaratne: My favourite shots of the innings were his shots off Steyn. He bowled a short one that KJ smashed onto the bank, and then later a pick-up shot that Sanath Jayasuriya plays, again onto that same bank. He was confident he could clear that boundary, because it was a short one on his leg side.

Vishwa: I've got no words to describe them. If you can hit those sixes off bowlers of that stature, then you're a great batsman. Sanath Jayasuriya is the only other batsman I've seen who can hit those shots off those balls. That's incredible talent. When I saw that, it helped me keep going. I thought, as long as I stay here, he will win it.

Perera: When I was batting with the tail, I knew we couldn't win this match by just scoring singles. I was the last proper batsman left. When the time felt right for me, I took my chances. I had really wanted to hit two or three sixes off Steyn as we were getting close. Thankfully I was able to do that. I think my decision-making was really good.

On the fourth afternoon, Perera sealed the win with a boundary off Rabada.

Karunaratne: I also loved the glide past the slip to win the match - the same shot that finished the 1996 World Cup. I would never have played that shot with a slip in place, but KJ took the risk.

Steyn: I remember he leant back and not quite nicked but played it past slip.

Karunaratne: When he hit that shot, it was manic inside the dressing room. We were screaming, jumping on each other, high-fiving, and then we poured out and ran out onto the field. It wasn't just the release of the pressure from the last couple of hours, it was the release of everything that had built up for months for us. In my career, that's one of the victories I enjoyed the most.

Vishwa Fernando on his 78-run tenth-wicket stand with Perera: ""My job was to protect my wicket, not to score runs, so I told Kusal aiya: You score the runs, let's get ten runs closer, and another ten, and take it from there" © Getty Images

Steyn: I remember there was this word that was going around in the dressing room, which was "jammy". If something happened that had some luck attached to it, it was described as "jammy" - like a guy dives to take a catch with his left hand and he drops it and second slip catches it, for example. Or you lean forward as a batter and it hits the pad, bounces up, hits your gloves, lands on the stumps - "Oh that's such a jammy dismissal". At the time, I actually despised the word, because I felt like that was the excuse for anything that happened instead of us taking responsibility. After the game, I was like, no, no, no, that's not jammy, that was beautifully played.

Philander: It was one of those innings where I thought he nullified every attack we threw at him. It's one of the best ones I've seen a player get against us.

Steyn: I saw Mahela [Jayawardene] and Kumar [Sangakkara] put on a world record in what was an absolute thrashing for us in 2006. And that was great. This innings was completely different but equally amazing. It was one of those innings that knocked me backwards, physically knocked me backwards. Some other innings you just say, "That's well played." But this one hit me hard.

Karunaratne: I definitely couldn't play an innings like that. And I don't know - even Sanga and Mahela probably couldn't do that kind of job with the tail.

Kusal Perera, Vishwa Fernando, and Chandika Hathurusinghe's quotes are from interviews conducted for ESPNcricinfo around the time the match was played, five years ago.

Andrew Fidel Fernando is a senior writer at ESPNcricinfo. @afidelf

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

 

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