MINUTES after South Africa completed their victory over Sri Lanka in the first Test on Sunday, the parched pitch was given what it had cried out for, water.

Plumes of the wet stuff arched through the air from the sprinklers and seemed to disappear straight into the strip of bone-coloured earth that ground staff had denied a drop for the past five days.

Play was held up for eight minutes.

That would seem a lot of fuss about not much. Between them, left-arm spinner Rangana Herath and off-spinner Dilruwan Perera bowled 71.35% of all the overs Sri Lanka sent down.

SA had three spinners - Imran Tahir, JP Duminy and Dean Elgar - in the mix, but they shouldered only 44.23% of the workload. Herath bowled more overs in SA's two innings, 82, than all three of the visitors' slow men: 78.

Imran Tahir was listless for most of the match. His troubles were part of the overarching question: why did it seem as if SA's spinners were going nowhere slowly in Galle despite the favourable conditions?

"We always talk about spinners trying to be consistent in the areas that they bowl," SA's spin consultant, Claude Henderson, said. "That doesn't mean how many runs they go for but how many singles they go for in an over, which Imran did really well on Sunday.

"The other message I've had for him is that he mustn't fall into the trap of thinking that because we are in Sri Lanka and the wickets are dry and the spinners come into play, he must take five wickets. It's about building the pressure. Wickets are a bonus." Henderson will have to repeat that mantra many times before and during the second Test on Thursday.