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Cape Town - Ricardo Vasconcelos scored an unbeaten 78 runs to give the Coca-Cola South Africa under-19s a solid platform on which to build after day one of their three-day Youth Test against Sri Lanka in Colombo on Thursday.
The wicketkeeper-batsman helped move his side from 120/6 in 33 overs to a more noteworthy 206 (56.1 overs) after winning the toss and electing to bat first.
The visitors had a shaky start to their innings thanks to Rashmika Dilshan (3/62) and Thilan Prasan (2/31) who took five wickets between them. They lost Jesse Christensen and Joshua van Heerden for zero and six respectively within the first eight overs of the match, followed by Jerome Bossr for 2. Raynard van Tonder (41 off 43) and captain, Wiaan Mulder (41 off 74) brought life to the innings with a 67-run partnership for the fifth wicket before they fell to Prasan and Dilshan respectively.
Wandile Makwetu hit a hard-fought 24 off 45 deliveries before making way for Vasconcelos at the start of the 34th over. The latter’s 78 came off 95 balls, including nine fours and two sixes. The lower order did not add much in the way of runs, but Vasconcelos managed two 37-run partnerships for the ninth and tenth wickets with Siphamandla Krweqe (6 off 12) and Akhona Mnyaka (0 off 18) to get their side to a more satisfactory score.
The hosts got off to a stronger start than South Africa thanks to an unbeaten half-century by opening batsman, Vishva Chathuranga (59*). Mnyaka (1/20) and Mulder (1/33) managed a breakthrough each, getting rid of Pathum Nissanka (0) and captain, Avishka Fernando (9).
Sri Lanka were 108/2 (32 overs) at stumps.
