Johannesburg - Henry Davids kept the Chevrolet Knights at bay for more than four hours but it was not enough to prevent the visitors from moving comfortably towards a valuable away victory on the third day of their SuperSport Series match against the Nashua Titans at SuperSport Park on Saturday.

Davids was desperately unlucky not to record his ninth first-class century, being dismissed five runs short of that mark (167 balls, 15 fours). Jacques Rudolph (54 off 88 balls, 9 fours) was the only other home batsman to make much of a stand and the Knights were left to score a very modest 98 for victory with more than a day to get the runs.

The Knights finished the day on 73/3 and will have to come back on Sunday to score the remaining 25 runs. Marchant de Lange has taken all three wickets to fall, giving him five in the match.

The most successful bowler for the Knights in the Titans’ second innings was their under-rated left-arm spinner, Dean Elgar, who returned career-best figures of 4/25 in seven overs.

At the Bidvest Wanderers Stadium, Hashim Amla warmed up for the forthcoming series against Australia with a superb double century that enabled the Sunfoil Dolphins to lead the bizhub Highveld Lions by 208 runs on the first innings.

Amla (208 off 281 balls with 25 fours and a six) and Vaughn van Jaarsveld (103 off 154 balls) shared a third-wicket partnership of 200 in 46 overs to take the game away from the Lions. It was Van Jaarsveld’s ninth first-class century and Amla’s 32nd and remarkably the left-hander scored 88 of his 103 runs in boundaries (22 fours).

Another Protea, David Miller, also showed good early season form (48 off 80 balls, 7 fours) while Robbie Frylinck has had a fine all-round match with a typically aggressive knock of 48 (41 balls, 5 fours and 2 sixes) to back up his six wickets in the Lions’ first innings.

It was a long haul for the seven bowlers used by the Lions of whom Ethan O’Reilly and Craig Alexander took two wickets each.

The Lions closed the day on 27 without loss with Alviro Petersen taking his match aggregate past the 200 runs mark.

They take a deficit of 181 runs into the final day.