A STRAY dog that had wandered onto Galle's outfield snuffled at a spot near the cover boundary and proceeded to dig a hole yesterday afternoon.

Just then, AB de Villiers speared a delivery square through the off side. For a moment, ball might have bitten dog. Happily, it sped past, followed by a fielder. Only once the boundary had been scored did the dog bother to look up.

"This hole will need to be much deeper," it seemed to say with a dismissive glance over its shoulder, "if you are to bury Sri Lanka here."

In the nine overs that remained, SA scored 22 runs and lost two wickets to reach stumps on 268/5. At tea, they had been 194/1. The dog would have been right.

Dean Elgar's gutsy 103, the first test century by an SA opener in Sri Lanka, and Faf du Plessis's gritty 80 set the visitors' tails wagging. But they will indeed have to dig the hole a lot deeper to bury Sri Lanka. "We would have loved to be one down or three down, but such is the nature of the beast that we're five down," Elgar said.

If SA's quicks don't get far on a pitch bespoke for spin, it will be up to Imran Tahir, JP Duminy and Elgar to do the business. Elgar, whose silky square drive and a late cut played as deftly if he was putting a cherry on a cake, delivered an innings of more pomp and circumstance than Du Plessis.

Elgar took just three singles off the last 23 balls of his innings, which ended with a weary slash to Suranga Lakmal and a catch by Dinesh Chandimal.

That brought Hashim Amla to the crease for his first innings as a test captain. He spent 37 minutes and 36 balls acclimatising.

Two balls later, Amla lifted an innocuous delivery straight to extra cover. Then Du Plessis fell to a sharp catch at short leg by Kaushal Silva and AB de Villiers played on to Suranga Lakmal.

Every dog day has its afternoon.