On May 23 this year one of the greatest batsmen of the current generation announced his retirement from all forms of International cricket. As we all know that is none other than Abraham Benjamin De Villiers who is well known as ABD for his fans. After having a successful home test series with Aussies, the veteran batsman announced his retirement to the cricketing world during VIVO IPL 2018. Then everyone wanted to see how the team performs in post ABD era. According to the schedules post ABD era started for Proteas with their tour of Sri Lanka. The tour includes 2 tests, 5 ODIs and only one T20I at the end of the tour. The series kick started with the test match on 12^th July in Galle following a two-day warm-up game in P Sara Oval Colombo.  The Lankans started the series without their captain who is suspended for the misconduct of ICC code of ethics accompanying with their head coach Haturusinghe. In the first match Lankans won the toss and opted to bat first, what most of the teams do in the sub-continent pitches after winning the toss. The hosts managed to won the test match by 278 runs comfortably. Dimuth Karunaratne , the opening batsman was awarded as the man of the match. As usual the Galle pitch offered a lot for the spinners right from the day 1. Even though it was a spin friendly pitch the no.1 pace bowler Rabada managed to pick 7 wickets in the match which shows the quality of such a great speed star. The South African batsmen were trapped by the Lankan spinners Rangana Herath and Dilruwan Perera throughout the game. The SL spinners did a quiet nice job for their team to record this historical win by taking 15 wickets jointly. In the second innings of the game the no.2 ranked team was bowled out for just 73 which is their lowest test innings total in the history after them re admission to International cricket. The same thing continued in the second test too which started on 20^th July in Sinhalese Sports Club, Colombo. In the toss also, same thing happened. SL managed to win the match by 199 runs and the SL opener Dimuth Karunaratne was awarded as the man of the match and also the man of the series. All the things remained same thing in the second test also like first test. That is the SA’s weakness in playing the spin. It’s now become a common problem for overseas team to face the spin attacks in subcontinent. There are many arguments going around the cricketing world about the ranked turners. In 2015 the Nagpur pitch which hosted a test between India and South Africa was rated poor by the ICC where SA struggled a lot like this series.  But spin bowling is also a major part of the game. If there is nothing wrong with seamer friendly pitches in South Africa, England,New Zealand and Australia then nothing wrong with the ranked turners in the sub-continent. By the way no we come to the point in what went wrong for Proteas in the tour. Spin bowling has always been a threat to South African batsmen over the last two decades. In their last tour to Sri Lanka also the Proteas batsmen also faced the same problem. In 2015 when South Africa toured India also the same problem happened and they eventually lost the series 3-0, where one game was abandoned due to Rain in the four match test series. As they play most of their matches in home and home conditions are ideal for the fast bowlers, they are lacking their skills to play spin. Most of the time they play in back foot in seaming conditions. So, when they are coming to subcontinents they are forced to play in front foot and that becomes a serious issue for them. Vice versa sub continental batsmen also facing these problems when playing in overseas. In this series they had done a mistake in squad selection. One more spinner should be added to the tour squad as they lacked a spinner in the 2^nd test as their spinner Shamsi had an unfortunate death of his father. In the second test their only spinner Keshav Maharaj had a amazing spells of bowling with a record nine wicket haul in the first innings. If they had another lead spinner in the playing xi the match would have been poised in a different direction. At the end of the game the skipper Faf DuPlessis also agreed the same fact in the post-match presentation. Another main thing went for arguments is absence of AB de Villiers. But on fact we should agree that if he was in the squad also the results would have been the same thing. In 2015 test series with India he was in the squad. But the result was the same. If he was in the squad only there would be some changes in the numbers of  the game and the results would have been the same. So, this series loss of no.2 ranked team to a no.6 ranked team shows that the home conditions have much impact in the longer format of the game. Currently every team is facing these types of problems when touring outside the home or region. This home advantage makes the test cricket one sided and misses the welcome of the current generation kids. As this series comes to an end he next biggest test series is on the way as the no.1 test team tours England with some expected clashes. Let’s see what happens in that series and see how visitors overcome the home advantage of hosts and the typical seaming conditions in England. Featured by Thiluxan Subramaniam