Game of pace: Roaring Rabada raids Windies wickets for comfortable SA win, despite Blackwood heroics

At SuperSport Park, Centurion

A Test match that looked to have the potential of a run-fest ended in a cascade of wickets as South Africa maintained their Test stranglehold over the West Indies with an 87-run win on the third evening on Thursday.

South Africa's collapse to 116, their lowest score against the visitors, set the West Indies 247 to win, which would have been the second-highest successful run chase at the ground.

The battling Jermaine Blackwood (79) tried his best to keep his team afloat, but no other batter crossed 20 as Kagiso Rabada summoned his reserves to break the back of the West Indian resistance at crucial times.

The West Indies bowled well enough to keep their team in the hunt, especially after they took 10 South African wickets for just 85 runs from the second evening and through the first session on Thursday.

They just didn't have the batting reserves and temperament to challenge the hosts on a surface that switched up on the batters like a cornered cobra.

It had started placid enough to allow Aiden Markram (115 and 47) to score the game's only century and share big stands with Dean Elgar and Tony de Zorzi on day one.

But once SA collapsed from 221/1 to 342 all out, it became a bowler's game to a point where all four innings saw pacemen take five-fors.

Alzarri Joseph's 5/81 was countered by Anrich Nortje's 5/36, which was met by Kemar Roach's 5/47. But the last five-wicket haul is always the one that matters, with Rabada taking 6/50 to ensure Markram's batting contributions didn't go to waste.

After being dismissed for their paltry total 18 minutes before lunch, South Africa only needed three balls to get their wicket account off the mark when Rabada strangled West Indian captain Kraigg Brathwaite (0)