AB De Villiers, Amla set up Proteas' victory

AB de Villiers scored his third century in successive innings and his fourth in his last six ODI innings as the Proteas cantered to victory by 66 runs in the opening limited overs international against the West Indies at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium on Saturday.

He became the fourth player to score three ODI centuries in a row, one of the other three (the two other are Pakistanis) being Herschelle Gibbs.

After what turned out to be a good toss to lose, the Proteas compiled a solid rather than spectacular 280-7 in an innings reduced to 48 overs after a couple of showers with De Villiers and man-of-the-match Hashim Amla both making run-a-ball centuries and sharing a second wicket stand of 129 that provided the foundation of the innings.

Amla scored quickly initially but both batsmen struggled to force the pace as the surface got slower and slower and in the end could be well satisfied to make identical scores of 102 off 101 balls in the case of De Villiers and off 109 balls in the case of Amla.

The Proteas' bowling attack once again put up a strong performance to dismiss the West Indies for 215 in the 45th over to complete a comprehensive win.

Johan Botha, Dale Steyn and Ryan McLaren all took two wickets with Botha taking his 50th ODI wicket in the process.

Morne Morkel continued his run of good form with three wickets and they were all important ones - Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Kieron Pollard.

Generally it was a polished all-round performance as the team continues to inch its way back to form only spoiled by a couple of missed chances that allowed Gayle to make the Windies top score of 45.

What was pleasing was that the generation of new leaders such as De Villiers, Amla, Morkel, Steyn and McLaren is continuing to come to the fore and make Smith's job at the helm a lot easier.

Afterwards De Villiers spoke movingly of how the early ICC World Twenty20 exit had affected the Proteas and how they had got the show back on the road again.

"The mood was very stressed after the ICC World Twenty20," commented De Villiers, "and we are still very disappointed at what happened. That will never go away. It is now a matter of bouncing back. We have played decent cricket at times but we are not back where we want to be. We want to be consistent and play positive, attacking cricket as we approach next season.

"We are taking it step by step. We have had a lot of meetings and briefings and positive chats with one another and we are all very hungry to play some good cricket and to give the public back home what they are looking for. And that is trophies and lots of wins."

"We are building towards that. We have the players and the talent in the team, we have the management and now it is just a case of going out there and playing with good basics and doing the job that everybody expects of us."