Pollock relieved with victory

Shaun Pollock's three early wickets were crucial blows for South Africa © Getty Images

Shaun Pollock was a relieved man after South Africa registered their first win of the VB series on Sunday, beating Australia by five wickets as Brisbane. Pollock, who won the Man-of-the-Match award, admitted their next game, against Sri Lanka on Tuesday, held an added significance.

"We've played some good cricket, we've just not been able to capitalise on certain times in matches where we can kick on and put pressure on them," he said. "But it's nice to get a win under our belts. It's a big game now for us on Tuesday against Sri Lanka. We'll try to keep the momentum going for the rest of the series.

"Mike Hussey played well with Brett Lee, who did a great job, but we realised the wicket was playing better," Pollock said. "It didn't seem to do as much later so we knew that if we kept them down to as little as possible we could chase them down."

After losing three early wickets to Pollock, the home side recovered through Hussey, who compiled another fifty, and Lee to post a total that Ricky Ponting felt wasn't enough. "You can't get 228 on that sort of wicket and expect to be competitive," he said. "We are going to have a look at the way we were dismissed and some of the shots we played early on in our innings. We had a very good hit-out as far as skills were concerned a couple of days ago so we were 100% ready and ripe for this game."