Gibbs comes good as SA stretch winning run to 10

Whether Herschelle Gibbs was more relieved than pleased with himself was difficult to tell, but who could blame the 26-year-old for either emotion after his 79 had ensured South Africa's five-wicket victory in the fifth Standard Bank one-day international against Sri Lanka at Goodyear Park on Sunday.

The win gave South Africa a 5-0 lead in the series and extends a streak That started in Benoni in September to 10 victories on the trot. This matches the South African record set in 1996 and one more win at the Wanderers on Wednesday will equal the 11 victories achieved by the West Indies in the 1980s.

There is some debate as to whether this is the record or a sequence of 13 wins, interrupted by a no result, achieved by Australia. Whatever the case, the South Africans are playing very good cricket at the moment, a point freely acknowledged by Sanath Jayasuriya.

But on a personal level it was Gibbs' day. He has served a six-month ban and has struggled to settle back in, but on Sunday it all started to come together for him. He said that he had been more nervous making his comeback than he had been on debut and admitted that the pressure had got to him, but also said that all batsmen go through these runs of poor form.

As it happened, Sunday's mach might have been set up for him. Sri Lanka's 206 was never likely to extend a South African team that is batting well at the moment, an all he really needed to do was stay at the crease for as long as he could.

At the other end Boeta Dippenaar looked in cracking form in making 28, Nicky Boje was even better in clubbing 40 of just 31 balls while Jacques Kallis again looked effortless in making 31.

But the longer Gibbs stayed the better he played and it took a freakish dismissal (for someone as quick as Gibbs to be run out by Jonty Rhodes is freakish) to get rid of him.

Before that Sri Lankan had again caved in. On a pitch that offered early movement to the South African seamers, they crumbled to 80 for five inside the first 17 overs and there was no coming back.

"We can't put it together," said Jayasuriya, "the batting and the bowling. I thought I was batting well today, but ..."

Jayasuriya was, in fact, looking as good as he has in South Africa. He climbed into Allan Donald to the extent that the South Africa conceded 35 off his first four overs. Donald was clearly rusty after a six-week layoff, but he would not have expected to be treated quite so rudely on his home ground.

For all that, though, six of the Sri Lankan batsmen scored 20 or more, but Kumar Sangakkara's 33 was the top score. And the truth is that too many of the senior batsmen simply lacked the resolve to deal with a ball that seamed and bounced.

This was underlined by Pramodya Wickramasinghe who gutsed it out for 48 minutes in making 32 and even Dilhara Fernando managed to stick around for threequarters-of-an-hour for his 12. The pair of them put on 34 for the ninth wicket and it was the only stand of any note in the innings apart from the 62 between Russel Arnold and Sangakkara for the sixth wicket, a Sri Lankan record against South Africa.

But it was in the end Gibbs' day as South Africa rolled onward, apparently unstoppable at the moment. The South Africans will be looking for their 11th successive win at the Wanderers on Wednesday and it is very difficult to see how Sri Lanka can stop them.