Today saw the last of the ODI’s with the West Indies once again winning the toss and choosing bat first on a very dry looking pitch. It would seem that Sulieman Benn has been left out of the team for disciplinary reasons because the West Indies have gone into this game without a specialist spinner. South Africa on the hand, have played both spinners so it isn’t difficult to form an opinion on Mr Benn’s omission.

The West Indies appeared a great deal more structured with Shivnarine Chanderpaul playing the anchor roll and Narsingh Deonarine proving him with good support. When you add some hard hitting at the end by Keiron Pollard and Darren Sammy we witnessed an overall innings that appeared to have a plan, something that has been lacking in the series so far from the home team. 252 – 6 would appear to be a competitive total but it was the South African spinners that helped limit the West Indies and I have a feeling that the lack of a specialist spinner in their line up might be sorely missed.

South Africa started well enough again with Hashim Amla going past 400 runs for the series and with Graeme Smith, putting on 40 for the first wicket before Smith became Dwayne Bravo’s victim for the fourth time in five matches. Amla’s untimely run out didn’t really make much difference to the tempo of the South African innings as Jacques Kallis continued in a positive manner in partnership with AB de Villiers before AB rather surprisingly holed out to long on in Chris Gayle’s first over.

This appeared to be a minor setback until Kallis was given out caught behind the wicket, a decision, it would seem, that he didn’t entirely agree with and Mark Boucher was put under pressure having had no cricket so far on the tour. This all lead to the run rate creeping out although all was still pretty much under control until JP Duminy (51 in 75 balls) was bowled by Jerome Taylor playing a shot that didn’t seem necessary at the time. This brought Ryan McLaren to the crease who found it difficult to lay bat on ball and the pressure mounted to such a degree that the run rate was suddenly out to 8 runs an over.

Meanwhile, Johan Botha kept a cool head and batted very sensibly. Then horrors of horrors, Botha miss-timed a pull shot onto the leg side and David Bernard took a spectacular catch in the deep and McLaren was run out in the space of 4 balls. This left South Africa requiring 17 to win from the last two overs.

Roelof van der Merwe, the little tiger that he is saw South Africa home and ‘Lopsy’ Tsotsobe hit the winning runs with two balls to go.

That brings to an end an excellent campaign for Graeme Smith and his team with the Test match series ahead. It also ends my regular daily blogs, but look out for the odd one from me during the Tests.