They can take the fight out of the Eastern Cape, but good luck taking the Eastern Cape out of the fight. Summerstrand, a prime coastal stretch of Gqeberha, has been intermittently without power since Thursday. In Walmer, another affluent part of the city, there was no water coming out of the taps for much of Friday.

And this in a place where water price hikes imposed during the drought that hit the province from 2015 to 2020 to curb consumption of the precious water remain in place, even though rainfall has returned to normal and even more – Floods in June and October killed 17 people and displaced 5,500. Perhaps water remains unnecessarily expensive here because punitive tariffs pump $1.3 million into the state coffers every month.

St. George’s Park knows the struggle. Two hours into the men’s T20I between South Africa and India last month, the Springboks took on Scotland at Murrayfield in Edinburgh.

That raised the specter of a mass exodus between innings to watch on television the country’s most prominent – and, with a record four Rugby World Cup titles, most successful – team in any sport. Luckily, that didn’t happen and cricket fans were rewarded with the home side’s only win in the four-match series.

Something similar happened on Saturday. The Stormers Champions Cup rugby match against Toulon at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium – five kilometers from St George’s Park – began as day three of the second men’s Test against Sri Lanka stalled. The 1,278 who were at the cricket at kick-off time were clearly not rugby or Stormers fans. However, an estimated 20,000 spectators attended the rugby at the time and there was a queue outside the stadium waiting to gain entry. The final viewership was over 23,180.

Dane Paterson is from the Western Cape, not the Eastern Cape. But he also knows about fighting. He was born into a cricket culture that was full of taller, leaner, meaner, faster and – ultimately – younger bowlers, so how could he not?

Paterson was brought in to bowl the seventh over with the new ball – his 16th over of Sri Lanka’s first innings and the eighth before lunch – and saw Kusal Mendis hit his first, long shot attempt in the air and just out of reach from Tristan Stubbs in the gully fired away for four. Mendis defended the rest of the over until the fourth ball, which hit his uncertain shot but hit nothing.

Paterson bowled the first delivery of his next over outside Dhananjaya de Silva’s off-stump. The ball deviated slightly and De Silva’s cross flew to Markram at second slip.

Two balls later, Mendis left a throw that crept inside and touched the top of the pad.

Another two balls later, Lahiru Kumara had a fierce attempt that went over him. Kumara managed to place a good piece of willow on leather and the ball flew violently through the air. But only to the gully, where Marco Jansen found a way to fold his long left lever arm and make a stunning catch.

With this, the Lankans plummeted from 297/5 to 298/8. When it started they had been 61 runs behind and would have hoped to gain a significant lead. At the end of the over they were wondering how big their deficit would be.

Paterson had tackled those six fateful balls with just the wicket of Dinesh Chandimal, who was caught behind after an equalizing throw after tea on Friday to sustain himself from his spells of eight and seven overs. On Saturday, he bowled another seven and completed his first five-wicket haul in his sixth Test and 36th year when an off-swinger took Vishwa Fernando’s edge on its way into the gloves of Kyle Verreynne. His dismissal of Chandimal ended a stand of 109 with Pathum Nissanka, and De Silva and Mendis had established themselves – with 14 off 26 and 16 off 27 – before Paterson dismissed them.

It doesn’t get any better than this for someone who, before knowing he would be playing in the game as a replacement for the injured Gerald Coetzee, said he would “rather do the holding job, the dirty work” while the game is going on the likes of Kagiso Rabada, Jansen and Keshav Maharaj set out to take the wickets and with them the glory.

Paterson, he didn’t quite say, would have been content to be the donkey bowler. Maybe the band thought that was his role. After all, they played “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” during at least one of his performances.

As it turned out, Paterson bowled fewer overs than any of the other frontline members of the attack, but was just as threatening. And of course he took more wickets than anyone else. There was nothing dirty about his 5/71.

“At 35 you never know when you’re going to be done with international cricket,” Paterson told a press conference. In fact, he felt the effects of the strong westerly wind into which he bowled all of his 22 overs: “My hairline took more hits than my body yesterday. But a person has to raise their hand, and I did.”

Consequently, what might have been an advantage for Lanka turned into a 30-run deficit. They had to hit hard and fast on the best pitch for the bat in order to have a say in the direction of the game.

But Tony de Zorzi and Aiden Markram kept them fighting for almost an hour before Prabath Jayasuriya turned a ball through the goal left open by De Zorzi and bowled it.

Markram stood firm and scored 55, his first half-century, in a dozen innings across all formats – and in which he often looked desperate. Even the most talented among us sometimes struggle.

Jayasuriya caught first-innings century maker Ryan Rickelton on the wrong foot and took a 24-point lead, but then Tristan Stubbs and Temba shared an unbroken 82 in 11 minutes two hours to go to give South Africa a lead of 14 221 and seven to put in the stumps wickets stand.

Stubbs, who spent more than two hours scoring his 36, seemed determined to make up for the poor knock that left him four behind in the first innings. Bavuma, who is in the form of his life, was just two runs away from his fourth consecutive score of 50 or more.

Without Paterson’s bowling, South Africa wouldn’t be in this position. Actually without his persistence: “People like (Vernon) Philander, (Morne) Morkel, (Dale) Steyn all played before me. And you think, ‘Could I get my chance one day?’ Today I got my chance and I used it with both hands.

“I thought I had played my last Test in Hamilton (in February) and here I take a five for. I didn’t give up.”

Angelo Mathews, who is two years older than Paterson, compared the South African’s bowling to that of Philander – a rare compliment – and echoed the younger man’s approach: “We don’t give up. They are ahead of us in the game but if we can get a few early wickets tomorrow, we can still push them back.

Even South Africa fans will be hoping for it. Because it feels unfair to subject these visitors to such a struggle, considering what they’ve been through in the last few years. However, they will compete on a pitch that is expected to become increasingly difficult to beat from the middle of Sunday’s second training session.

They can get Sri Lanka out of their own major trouble at home, but good luck getting them out of this clash at St George’s Park.