The South Africans had made it clear before this Test match, if anyone was willing to hear. They want to win the fifth Test and take the series 3-0; there would be no foot taken off the pedal. On Thursday they proved true to their word, and seized the final Test against the West Indies by the scruff of the neck. At close of play the West Indies were 214-9, well short of par.

There goes another one Photo CricInfo

There was very little that did not go captain Shaun Pollock's way apart from the toss, although Brian Lara (81) again wielded his magnificent bat and helped lift the home side from total disaster to something approaching respectability. Carl Hooper's decision to bat first on a wicket that has played well looked to be the correct one, but the West Indies batsmen failed to capitalise.

Allan Donald (4-47), returning after the hamstring injury which kept him out of the fourth Test, looked back to his fiery best, while Pollock (4-24) was also outstanding.

Things could not have got off to a worse start for the West Indies, their first wicket going down off the first ball of the match bowled by Donald. It was faced by debutant opening batsman Leon Garrick, called into the side at the eleventh hour after his 174 not out against the South Africans in a largely meaningless two-day warm-up game in Montego Bay at the weekend. The ball was just short of a length and rising on the diminutive Garrick, the batsmen cutting it straight to Shaun Pollock in the gulley.

Garrick's preparations for the Test were hardly ideal, but he now knows the difference between a two-day knockabout and Test cricket. It was an injudicious shot from a nervous batsman, who stood for several seconds at the crease in horror and disbelief at the way he had thrown his wicket away.

He joins a man who previously ran a club all of his own, for Test batsmen dismissed for a duck on debut off the first ball of a Test match. The other is South Africa's Jimmy Cook, dismissed by Kapil Dev of Indian in Durban in 1992-1993.

By lunch, Shivnarine Chanderpaul (7) and Chris Gayle (25) had followed, and Marlon Samuels became Donald's third victim when he edged to Mark Boucher in the first over after the interval. His departure brought captain Carl Hooper to the crease and for the next hour or so, he and Lara wrested the initiative slowly back towards the West Indies.

The way it was handed back was a cameo of the series, and the culprit on this occasion was the captain. Pollock set the trap with two men on the boundary behind square on the leg side, bowled the bouncer, Hooper (25) hooked and Gary Kirsten took the catch.

Ridley Jacobs followed soon afterwards for a six-ball duck, but Dillon kept Lara company as the left-hander began to strike out. In eleven Tests against South Africa he has never reached 100 and again he fell frustratingly short, spooning a catch to Jacques Kallis as he baled out of a pull shot off Pollock. His 81 came in 228 minutes, off 156 balls and included 12 fours.

Dillon (24) offered three chances, but after Boucher spurned two of them with batsman on nought and two, he made it third time lucky with a good catch off a rising delivery from Donald which took the edge and flew high to his right.

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