The 2005–06 edition of the VB Series (so-called because of sponsor Victoria Bitter) was a three-team One Day International men's cricket tournament held in Australia in January and February 2006, between the hosting nation's team, South Africa and Sri Lanka. (Although all the matches were held in 2006, the convention is to refer to series using the name of the season, in this case the 2005–06 season). The teams played each other four with five points awarded for a win and a possible bonus point awarded either to the winners or losers depending on run rate. The top two teams on points went through to the best-of-three finals series. All matches were day-night matches except the final meeting between South Africa and Sri Lanka. South Africa had already been touring Australia for a month, but did not win any of their four first-class matches, and lost the Test series 0–2. Before that, they had been playing 14 successive ODIs, with their last series being a 2–2 draw in India. Sri Lanka were touring New Zealand immediately before this series, completing a tour that should have been played in 2004–05 but was postponed because of the Asian tsunami; they lost three ODIs and won only one. Their last ODI series before that was a 1–6 loss in India. At the start of the series, they were seventh on the ICC ODI Championship table; South Africa were second, 17 points behind leaders Australia and 12 points ahead of Sri Lanka. Group stage table Schedule Squads Warm-up matches Queensland v South Africans, 10 January South Africans won by 94 runs The South Africans scored almost twice as much as Queensland in this match, as both Boeta Dippenaar and Jacques Rudolph outscored Queensland's first eight partnerships. Mitchell Johnson, Andy Bichel and Michael Kasprowicz had taken a wicket each in the first twelve overs, and the tourists were three for 44, but Dippenaar and Rudolph added 88 for the fourth wicket before Rudolph was caught behind off Kasprowicz. Though Johnson added two more wickets, Dippenaar ended with 80 from the opening position, and the South Africans' innings totalled 205. Then, during the first 61 balls off the innings, Queensland lost six wickets. Five batsmen went for single-figure scores, as Garnett Kruger and Shaun Pollock shared the six scalps between them. A five-over partnership worth 22 between Bichel and wicket-keeper Chris Hartley took Queensland past 50,