South Africa comfortably beat Bangladesh by 168 runs at Potchefstroom thanks to a record equaling third One-Day International hundred in consecutive matches and a career best 153 from Herschelle Gibbs.

Winning the toss and working hard through the first six overs, Gibbs and Graeme Smith got the innings off on the right foot with Gibbs in particular showing what good form he is in at the moment. Playing some classic timed cover drives and pulling well when required he quickly went to his 50 in 49 balls.

A small stutter after Smith was out for 28, was the loss of Shaun Pollock batting at three for five.

Jacques Kallis, often accused of slowing the momentum down, was no slouch either racing to 47 before he tried to go to his 50 in spectacular form but ended short caught on the long off fence. Together with Gibbs he put on a partnership of 107 in 102 balls.

Boeta Dippenaar continued where Kallis left off scoring 41 off 47 balls before he too was caught. It was however Gibbs who kept the innings flowing. Once he reached his hundred, joining Zaheer Abbas and Saeed Anwar with three hundreds in three ODI matches, he threw the bat at everything. His final 50 runs coming in just 35 balls.

Tapash Baisya with 3/50 and Tulha Jubair with 4/65 shared the wickets between them, most coming at the death of the innings with the South Africans chasing the 300.

Bangladesh were always going to up against scoring 302 for the win, and with Makhaya Ntini finding early rhythm and wickets they crumbled to 26/5 after 15 overs.

The Bangladesh middle order looked a lot more comfortable against the medium and slow paced bowlers playing some good looking shots. Alok Kapali, 25 off 30, and Khaled Mahmud, 24 off 18, both had brief flurries with bat but once the pace was reintroduced the innings fell to pieces.

Khaled Mashud played a very patient innings ending on 34 not out and together with Tapash Baisya put on a new eighth wicket partnership for Bangladesh of 60 runs.

After two wickets from Allan Donald, Kallis wrapped up the innings taking three wickets in his last over to end with 4/33. It was however Makhaya Ntini who was the pick of the South African bowlers taking 3/20 in his 10 overs.

With the next match coming up on Sunday at Benoni, Bangladesh will have to do a lot of hard work to combat their inefficiencies in playing pace bowling. An area they can also work on is their fielding, after numerous errors in the field cost them two wickets and many runs.

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