West Indies v South Africa (3rd Test)

South Africa enjoy a lead of 94 runs with two first-innings wickets standing going into the third day of the third Test at Kingsmead and, not for the first time, they had Jonty Rhodes to thank.

After the West Indians had batted poorly to total just 198 after being sent in, the home side were generally on top of the bowlers yesterday, but a succession of sorry dismissals left them in danger of barely edging past that score.

Openers Gary Kirsten and Herschelle Gibbs, Jacques Kallis, Daryll Cullinan, Hansie Cronje and Shaun Pollock all flattered to deceive as they batted brightly without providing the major innings needed if the South Africans were to take control of the Test.

Rhodes came to the crease in the hour after lunch with the total 140 for four and it is thanks to his 85 not out, an innings of application but also moments of dazzling flair, that South Africa are in a reasonably healthy position after the second day, finishing on 292 for eight when bad light intervened with 12 overs remaining.

The courageous efforts of Rhodes when all seems lost and his resurgence in 1998 have been well-chronicled, but yesterday he was faced with a slightly different situation - South Africa were in charge, but their control was slipping and they seemed unlikely to make the big score needed to really shut the West Indians out of the Test and the series.

While adopting the same positive approach of the other South African batsmen, Rhodes did not follow their ill-judged chasings after the ball outside off and his feet were not stuck in the crease.

With sound shot-selection and a burning desire not to give his wicket away - he said later that he was inspired by the way Pat Symcox and Allan Donald put their bodies on the line in Port Elizabeth - he survived to the close and put his team in a solid position.

Kirsten and Gibbs, who showed great resolve in surviving the 16 overs left for them on the first afternoon, began fluently yesterday morning and took their opening stand to 57 before Gibbs, having just struck Franklyn Rose for a gorgeous four through the covers, hit the next ball weakly to wide mid-on. Under great off-field pressure and opening for just the third time in his nine Tests, Gibbs had done his bit though in scoring 35.

But just as the West Indians did after their half-century opening stand on Saturday, South Africa lost three wickets before lunch.

Kirsten could not build on his solid start and his off-side push to a lifting Rose delivery went to second slip, ending his innings at 26. Kallis struck two boundaries before being caught at the wicket for 11, his loose drive at a wide ball from Rose being one of the two worst shots of the Test so far, along with Carl Hooper's suicidal flash outside off on the first day.

Cullinan and Cronje, two strokeplayers with the ability to turn matches, took South Africa through to lunch (111 for three after 44 overs) without further loss and began to have fun after the break. With Cullinan hitting drives like tracer bullets and Cronje crashing leg-spinner Rawl Lewis about the place, the pair added 60 in entertaining fashion before Courtney Walsh burst through the captain's defences to bowl him for 30. Cronje did not move his feet too well and was neither forward nor back to counter an off-cutter.

Rhodes then joined Cullinan and immediately set about Ambrose, taking 16 and seven off his first two overs as he scored 24 out of the partnership of 42 in 40 minutes. Cullinan, having gone smoothly to 40, perhaps tried to emulate his batting partner too closely, and an attempted second run to third man saw Rose's lightning throw arrive at the stumps a split-second before Cullinan's bat. For the talented Gautenger it was another innings of great promise cut short by his own impetuosity.

Rose returned to the attack in the next over and kept things quiet in another excellent spell (five overs for two runs), but once he had been seen off Rhodes got stuck into spinners Lewis and Hooper.

He went to an 81-ball 50 and when captain Brian Lara tossed the second new ball to Rose with the score 236 for five in the 82nd over, it was the West Indies' last chance to keep their deficit to manageable proportions.

As he had done in an unchanged morning spell of 11 overs, three for 30, the 26-year-old Jamaican responded magnificently as the batting duties of Pollock (30), Mark Boucher (0) and Symcox (12) were ended in a six-over spell of three for 33.

On a day of few highlights - Rose's bowling apart - for the West Indians, Hooper's catch to dismiss Pollock was memorable, diving full-length to his right at second slip for a brilliant one-handed effort. In case the South Africans hadn't yet noticed, the West Indian vice-captain just does not drop them behind the wicket.

Three balls later, Boucher joined Pollock in the hut, bowled by a beauty while his feet were still trying to get going, and Rose then ended 23 minutes of typical Symcox fun and games with the perfect yorker.

Donald survived five balls yesterday afternoon but Rhodes will need to scamper and hustle his runs this morning if he is to convert yesterday's hard work into a century.

Rose was brilliant yesterday, finishing with six for 75 from 25.2 overs, and there is no doubt he will be given the task of denying Rhodes and ending the South African innings as early as possible this morning.

Ambrose has not had a share of the second new ball yet, and he will want to make amends for his dismal showing so far in this match.

If he and Rhodes are the talismen of their respective teams, then the tricky position the West Indians find themselves in is easily explained. Rhodes made the tall West Indian look decidedly silly as he ran him out for a duck on Saturday and then treated him like a novice bowler in his 85 not out yesterday. A bad day was made worse for Ambrose, who also bowled 10 no balls, when he twice misfielded, the first blaps gifting Rhodes a boundary and his half-century.

The sooner Ambrose rids himself of the first two days' jitters the better for the West Indians' hopes of saving this Test.

Day 3:

ANOTHER West Indian Indian batting collapse left South Africa on the brink of wrapping up the series at the end of the third day of the third Test at Kingsmead on Monday, two phenomenal catches by Herschelle Gibbs causing six wickets to fall for the addition of just 45 runs in the last session. Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Brian Lara's excellent partnership of 102 between lunch and tea had brought the West Indies back into the game as the teams emerged for the final session with the visitors 79 ahead with eight wickets standing, but an astonishing catch by Gibbs turned the match right around and inspired the South African bowlers to mount a stirring comeback.

Lara had gone to a majestic 79, allowing the bowlers little leeway as he punished their slightest error in line or length by hitting 15 boundaries, when Gibbs, one of the players most under pressure in the South African team, produced what could be a match-winning moment of genius. Lara, who was out pulling David Terbrugge in the first innings, hit the same bowler square on the leg side only to see a diving Gibbs pluck a screamer out of the air. The moment of fielding brilliance, normally the preserve of Jonty Rhodes, inspired the same South African bowlers who had been pasted by Lara and Chanderpaul in a third-wicket partnership of 160, and Lara's fellow left-hander fell in the next over, popping a catch back to Shaun Pollock to open the way for the South Africans to regain control.

Carl Hooper lasted nine balls before he inside-edged Pollock and wicketkeeper Mark Boucher took a brilliant, diving ``catch'' low to his left, although TV replays suggested he grounded the ball while attempting to clutch it to his chest. The umpires did not refer it to their colleague in the stands, however, and Hooper seemed happy to go.

The South Africans received another tremendous boost from Gibbs four overs later when his pace off the mark enabled him to catch with his left hand, diving full length, a mistimed Darren Ganga hook off Pollock that was going over his head at square leg.

The West Indies were suddenly in disarray on 213 for six and one run later the leg-spinner, Rawl Lewis, was caught behind off Allan Donald (with none of the controversy surrounding Boucher's previous catch) to register the dreaded pair.

Although Franklyn Rose hit five fours in making 22, when bad light stopped play with 14.1 overs scheduled before the close, the West Indies were only 132 ahead with two wickets standing. South Africa had gained a first-innings lead Monday morning when they were bowled out for 312, although Jonty Rhodes, Pietermaritzburg's most famous cricketing son, missed out on what would have been a popular century when he was caught and bowled by Courtney Walsh for 87.

Franklyn Rose then bowled Donald to wrap up the innings and finish with seven for 84, the 26-year-old removing Australia's great leg-spinner Clarrie Grimmett's previous best Kingsmead Test innings haul for an overseas bowler of seven for 100. The record has stood for 63 years, but Rose was full value for his success and the West Indies do need some joy on their beleaguered tour.

The West Indies began their second innings just after 10 am and Philo Wallace, who is not going to collect too many rave reviews from this tour, lasted just 12 balls before Donald had him caught behind. Everything was going according to plan when Junior Murray (29) fell with the total 41, but control was then wrestled from Hansie Cronje's hands by Chanderpaul and Lara.

Lara, one of the most feared players in world cricket, looked good from the outset. Unlike the first innings, when he decided to try to batter the bowlers into submission, his timing a placement were so perfect yesterday that he seemed to merely caress the ball to the boundary.

His battle with Donald, as always, was riveting. Although the West Indian captain took the honours, hitting him for 28 runs in his five overs after lunch, there was some reward for South Africa's great fast bowler when he later dismissed Lewis to reach 250 Test wickets and become the second fastest to reach the milestone.

With the second new ball due after 2.1 more overs, the South Africans should wrap up the West Indian innings fairly quickly Tuesday morning and look well-placed to beat the visitors for the third time in a row.

More- quotes

HERSCHELLE Gibbs modestly described his contribution to South Africa's devastating comeback in the final session of the third cricket Test at Kingsmead on Monday as ``being in the right place at the right time'' but it was his brilliant catching more than anything else that sent the West Indies crashing from 201 for two to 246 for eight by the close of the third day. Gibbs stopped a scintillating innings of 79 by Brian Lara with an extraordinary diving catch at square leg and then pulled off a superb effort in the same position to end Darren Ganga's half-an-hour stay. From then on there was only one team in it as the inspired South African attack got on a roll and left the West Indies reeling with a lead of just 132 and two wickets intact.

Until Gibbs's intervention Lara and Shivnarine Chanderpaul (75) were battering the South African attack in a partnership of 160 in just over three hours and the West Indians seemed to be getting back into the match. ``We really needed a wicket to break the partnership and I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time `` Gibbs said after the day's play. Both his captain Hansie Cronje and West Indies manager Clive Lloyd were more effusive in their praise as Gibbs dived full-length to catch a fierce Lara pull.

``It was a magnificent catch to dismiss Lara and change the game. Not too many players would have got to it,'' Lloyd himself a great fielder said. ``That catch turned it all round for us and it was a great effort in bad light,'' Cronje added. His dismissal of Ganga lost nothing in comparison as he ran backwards from square leg and once again dived full length to catch a mistimed nook going over his head. His efforts were rewarded with two other catches to equal the South African Test record of four in an innings held by Albert Vogler, Dave Nourse, Bruce Mitchell, Trevor Goddard, John Traicos and Andrew Hudson.

Cronje also praised Mark Boucher's effort to dismiss Carl Hooper as ``terrific'' although the catch has caused controversy, TV replays showing that the wicketkeeper did not always have the ball under control and it appeared to have touched the ground as he completed his dive. Cronje said the incident had been replayed on the new big screen at Kingsmead several times and said he was ``still convinced it was out''. Lloyd also refused to be drawn into a growing rumpus amongst the press corps saying it was up to the umpires to decide such matters and Hooper had walked.

The South Africans avoided more controversy when Cronje recalled Franklyn Rose, who had been run out after colliding with bowler Jacques Kallis, who was also going for a ball played into the off-side by Ridley Jacobs. According to Lloyd the West Indies are looking to extend their total to as close to 300 as possible Tuesday morning and hopefully exploit the vulnerable South African top-order batting. ``Our aim is to set them around 200 because you never can tell with those sort of targets. But I must say I am disappointed that we lost so many wickets after tea.''

Cronje blamed untidy bowling in the session between lunch and tea when Lara and Chanderpaul added 102, for putting South Africa in a tricky spot. ``We were giving them plenty of width, which was silly as they were scoring so many runs from outside off.''

The captain told the bowlers to tidy up their act during the tea break and the results were almost immediate, Lara falling only 22 balls into the session.