Teenage wonder boy Pretorius puts Proteas in charge with stunning 153

Lhuan-dre Pretorius showed why Shukri Conrad described him as a “special” talent, becoming the seventh South African to score a hundred on his Test debut in Bulawayo on Saturday. 

In the process the 19-year-old, also became the youngest South African to score a Test century, surpassing the previous record, held by the legendary Graeme Pollock, which he set against Australia in 1964. 

Pretorius scored 153 off only 160 balls, rescuing the Proteas from a precarious position of 22/3 when he arrived at the crease. At stumps, the holders of the World Test Championship mace were 418/9, with Corbin Bosch completing his maiden Test hundred in the last over of the day. 

It was a remarkable turnaround by the South Africans whose stand-in captain Keshav Maharaj chose to bat, on a pitch he felt would help the seamers early before settling down later in the day. 

Maharaj was right, but he would not have anticipated how much his top order would struggle against high quality seam bowling from Blessing Muzarabani and Tanaka Chivanga. The latter picked up the first three wickets to fall, all caught in the slips, all of those dismissals the result of extra bounce Chivanga was able to extract with the new ball. 

Pretorius got his innings going with a straight six off the fourth ball he faced followed by a boundary that he thrashed through the covers off left-arm spinner Wellington Masakadza and began changing the impetus of the innings with his aggressive approach. 

A mix up with Wiaan Mulder, saw South Africa lose a fourth wicket before lunch, but after the interval Pretorius and his Titans teammate Dewald Brevis, who like Pretorius was making his debut, dominated.

South Africa scored 86 runs in the hour after lunch with Pretorius delighting the visiting changeroom with plenty of thunderous shotmaking on both sides of the wicket. His driving down the ground was eye-catching, and when the Zimbabwean spinners erred in length — which they did often — he and Brevis easily smashed the ball out of the ground. The young Titans duo shared a partnership of 95 off only 88 balls, which changed the momentum of the Proteas' innings.

Muzarabani eventually gained the reward his efforts deserved when another short ball accounted for Brevis, who miscued a pull and was well caught in the covers by Chivanga for 51, and despite Masakadza dismissing Kyle Verreynne for 10, there was little respite for the Zimbabweans.

Pretorius, who absorbed a couple of tricky overs from Muzarabani, and Bosch added 108 for the seventh wicket, during which Pretorius reached his historic landmark, joining Andrew Hudson, Jacques Rudolph, Alviro Petersen, Faf du Plessis, Stiaan van Zyl and Stephen Cook as South African batters to score a hundred on their Test debut.

The innings continued a trend Pretorius has set in his career — he made a hundred on his first class debut last December — and while Saturday’s was only his 11th first class innings, he’s already made four centuries. 

He was hungry for more, blazing past 150, and even when he was eventually dismissed for 153 — which included 11 fours and four sixes — he still looked upset. “I really enjoy batting and I don’t want to get out,” he said afterwards.

Bosch meanwhile, who was happy to play second fiddle, then put himself at the forefront, marshalling the lower order, sharing partnerships of 41 with Maharaj and then 59 for the ninth wicket with the third debutant in the Proteas starting line-up, Codi Yusuf, who made 27.

Bosch, playing in just his second Test, scored an unbeaten 81 in his debut against Pakistan in last summer’s Boxing Day Test, used great power especially against the short ball and struck 10 fours, reaching his hundred in the last over of the day. 

He will resume on Sunday in the company of Kwena Maphaka, who showed great maturity in helping Bosch to his landmark and then smashed the last ball of the day over square leg for six, to give South Africa a happy end to a first day, which had started so problematically. 

Zimbabwe will rue the absence of a third seamer, with Muzarabani who finished with 2/59 and Chivanga who picked up 4/83, looking physically spent at the end of the day. The spinners were ineffective and allowed Pretorius and the rest of the South African batters too many freebies. 

“We knew they only had two seamers and we knew we could take the spinners out of the attack,” he said later.

That he most certainly did, on a day he will long remember.