South Africa finish off uncompetitive West Indies for 2-0 Test series victory

South Africa finished off an eight-wicket victory on Tuesday to win the third and final Test with a West Indies side that had collapsed before the end of Day 4.

South Africa retained their top Test ranking spot with their series win over West Indies. Carl Fourie / Gallo Images / Getty Images

Opener Dean Elgar hit an unbeaten 60 as South Africa coasted to a comfortable eight-wicket win over West Indies in the final Test at Newlands on Tuesday to take the three-match series 2-0 and retain their ranking as the top side in Tests.

Elgar and captain Hashim Amla (38 not out) saw South Africa home as they reached 124 for two wickets before lunch on the final day to secure victory.

“It is good to still be the No 1 Test team but it’s not really about the ranking. It needs to be about being a winning team for a long time,” Amla said.

They were 9 for 1 overnight and showed no hurry to knock off the remaining 115 runs needed for victory.

The first 44 balls of the day failed to deliver any runs before Elgar finally stroked a boundary off Jerome Taylor to break the stranglehold.

Faf du Plessis was out for 14 just after the first hour, handing Sulieman Benn a second wicket of the innings after the spinner bowled opener Alviro Petersen with the last ball on Monday. The tall left-arm spinner toiled for 16 successive overs on Tuesday to finish with figures of 2 for 24.

Tuesday’s win added to South Africa’s victory by an innings and 220 runs in the first Test in Pretoria. The second Test in Port Elizabeth was a rain-affected draw.

Rain also threatened to play a role in the final Test as half of the fourth day was lost to bad weather, offering the West Indies a chance to create a contest after clawing back from a 92-run first innings deficit.

But their resistance crumbled after Marlon Samuels lost his wicket at 182 for 4 in the second innings on Monday, out for 74 to an injudicious slog that saw him caught on the boundary.

It precipitated a collapse as their next six wickets went for a paltry 33 runs as they were dismissed for 215, leaving South Africa a modest target of 124 to win.

“He could have gone on and made a real difference,” said West Indies captain Denesh Ramdin of Samuels’ rash dismissal.

“We needed at least 70 more runs to be comfortable and make a game of it on the last day.”

The two teams will play three Twenty20 internationals and five one-day internationals ahead of the World Cup.

PETERSEN RETIRES

South African opener Petersen announced his retirement from international cricket on Tuesday immediately after the match.

Petersen, 34, said he wanted “to move on with his career” and will play county cricket and for the Johannesburg-based Lions for the next three years.

Petersen played 36 Tests from 2010, scoring 2,093 runs at an average of 34.88 with five centuries but has struggled for form recently.

“The last couple of months were really frustrating as I felt my form was there but I would like to have scored more runs,” he told a news conference.

Petersen, who also played for South Africa in limited-overs formats, managed just 86 runs in four innings in the three-Test series against the West Indies.

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