The South African bowlers thoroughly dominated the West Indies batting line-up in the first innings of the first Test in a bowlers’ day out at St Lucia.
Lungi Ngidi and Anrich Nortje demolished the batting as the duo shared nine wickets among themselves. Apart from them, Kagiso Rabada also picked up one wicket to bundle out West Indies for 97 on Day 1.
West Indies didn't really start off the proceedings well and lost the openers to Nortje early in the innings. The home side never really made a comeback and were soon left tottering at 74/8 to eventually get bowled out.
Jason Holder top-scored for the Caribbean side with 20.
Ngidi’s scalps included the wickets of Roston Chase, Holder, wicket-keeper Joshua de Silva, Rakheem Cornwall and Kemar Roach to return with figures of 5/19.
The West Indies bowlers though created some problems for the South African batsmen in the initial phase of the innings as Roach sent captain Dean Elgar packing for a duck while Jayden Seales removed Keegan Petersen early.
But opener Aiden Markram was then joined by Rassie van der Dussen and the two batsmen steadied the ship for the side to stitch a 79-run stand for the third wicket. Markram later departed for 60 and his dismissal was soon followed by Kyle Verreynne who was undone by Seales for 6.
Earlier in the day, the hosts were forced to make a concussion substitute after batsman Nkrumah Bonner suffered a blow to the helmet and was ruled out of the Test match. Kieran Powell was announced as a concussion substitute for the rest of the game, as permitted by the ICC rules.
Ngidi who bagged a five-wicket haul talked about the lead that the visitors have got. “We'll take that. Not very often you bowl a team out for 97. There was a bit in the wicket and we explored that as much as possible and we have a bit of a lead. We wanted to be ruthless in terms of lines and lengths,” he said.
South Africa were 128/4, leading West Indies by 31 runs with Van de Dussen and Quinton de Kock at the crease when the stumps were called on.