When conditions are tough, we need to be better - Shukri Conrad

Maybe South Africa had too many runs to play with, and thus struggled to keep their bowling radar as sharp as it might have been. Maybe the Sri Lankans remembered how to play in these conditions. Maybe the wind swinging from southerly to northerly for the first time in the match, flattening the pitch, was the thing.

Whatever else it was, the completion of South Africa's win in the first men's Test at Kingsmead on Saturday - by 233 runs with more than four sessions to spare - was hard work. In a match in which four wickets fell inside the first 20 overs, and 19 went down on the second day, to wait 17 minutes short of two hours for the first of the last five to tumble, and another two hours for the next to go, was like waiting for Godot.

Happily for the South Africans and their supporters, and unlike Godot, the other three did come. And quickly. They fell in the space of 34 deliveries after Lunch. Marco Jansen nailed Asitha Fernando's middle and leg stumps to seal victory, which earned him match figures of 11/86 - the second-best at this ground after Clarrie Grimmett's 13/173 for Australia in February and March 1936. That makes them the best by a fast bowler here.

And good enough for Jansen to crack the nod for player-of-the-match. Fair enough: we don't see 11/86 every day. But the key performance was delivered by Temba Bavuma. Not his 113 in the second innings, by which time the result was almost assured. Rather, Bavuma's 70 in the first innings, which started when South Africa were 14/2 on their way to 80/4 and helped nurse them to a total of 191, turned the match around.

At a press conference on Saturday, Shukri Conrad concurred: "Temba is at his best when backs are against the wall and he needs to stand up. He was exceptional in this match. That 70 went a long way to giving us something respectable to bowl at."

This was the first time in Bavuma's 60 Tests, encompassing 103 innings, that he has passed 50 in both of his trips to the crease. That wasn't lost on Conrad: "I quietly whispered to him yesterday evening that I thought this was his best hundred. I thought this was his best Test he's played, given what's gone before. He's come off a long layoff [to recover from an elbow injury sustained on October 4]. And the way he's battled through stuff epitomises Temba. That is what we want to see in the side."

Conrad saw more of the same quality in Wiaan Mulder, who volunteered to bat at No. 3 in the second innings - he normally bats at No. 7 - despite having broken a finger in the first innings.