India - South Africa - Test 2 Review

Well played India. Very well played and gave a perfect answer to all their critics and South Africa who were thinking they will run over India in this series.  The conditions were almost similar to the first test. Dhoni lost the toss and India were put in again on a seamer friendly track to face Steyn, Morkel & Co. The Indian top order batsmen did not do justice to their No. 1 test ranking and fell to some good deliveries playing loose shots. Steyn breathed fire the whole day, Morkel and other applied pressure from the other end, and the Indian team wasn’t looking so good at the end of the day with a score of 183/6. Smith must have been thinking repeat of the first test and he was would have slept peacefully in the night. However, this was to be the last peaceful night (of the series hopefully).

Indians were shot out the second day morning and the final score of 205 did not suggest much of a challenge to the South Africans. They begin their chase confidently scoring 23 runs off the first 5 overs when the returnee Zaheer Khan made his breakthrough by taking out his old foe and South African captain Graeme Smith. Petersen went far too across and exposed his stumps only to see the ball clip his leg stump. Kallis ran himself out backing up too far. DeVilliers thought he could repeat the stunt he pulled off in the last test and was out caught behind for a duck. At lunch time, they were 74/4 and all of a sudden things were not looking too bright for them. Their entire mental state changed in a matter for 16.4 overs and the Indian attack boosted by the return of Zaheer Khan was looking for the kill. It came with much ease in the second session of the day when the entire South African team was shot out for a paltry score of 131, conceding the lead of 74 precious runs and the Indian first innings score of 205 suddenly started looking much formidable.

The Indian top order except Sehwag did not contribute much in the second innings also. Sehwag started in cracking fashion and quickly raced to 32 off mere 31 balls when he was snared by TsoTsobe.  Steyn and Morkel went to work and took out M Vijay, Dravid and Tendulkar cheaply. Laxman and Pujara played with much grit and ensured that SA do not get much on top by not giving away any more wickets. The day ended at 92/4, and both teams had equal chance to win the match. This was only the end of Day 2 of a boxing day test match and everyone was probably stunned that two and a half innings have finished so early in the match. Smith would have been hopeful not to repeat the batting failure in the second innings when they would set out to chase the target set by the Indian team. Had he looked at the stats, he must have forgotten that a certain very very special man, who had been tonking runs in the second innings was batting.

Pujara went early the next day. Dhoni decided to take on SA bowlers, and scored freely. He added a quick 50 runs along with Laxman when he was out chasing a wide one from TsoTsobe. Harbhajan followed soon after and the Indians looked like folding up for 170 odd. Zaheer Khan, however, had other plans. He along with Laxman had met earlier on the same score four years ago in SA and took the score across 200. Zaheer Khan and Laxman batted determinedly, blocking out the good balls and punishing the bad ones, having a bit of fun on the way. Everyone had been taking about a 250 lead. Once that score was reached, Zaheer Khan had immense fun hitting consecutive fours off Tsotsobe. He pissed off Dale Steyn and received a ball on his helmet, only to give it back later when it was the SouthAfrican turn to bat. He and Laxman boosted to score to 228 and that set a pretty stiff chase of 303 runs for the home team.

Smith and Petersen began attackingly and took Zaheer for quite a few runs in his opening spell. They were cruising along happily at more than 5 runs an over when Smith got adventurous and skied a top edge from Sreesanth to be snapped up by Dhoni. Strike 1. Petersen and Amla were quickly snapped by Harbhajan and Sreesanth in successive overs, and the score suddenly looked from 63/0 to 82/3 and their most dependable and consistent batsman Amla was back in the pavilion. It was left upto Kallis, DeVilliers and Prince to guide the team to safety, which looked a huge huge task in itself. The truth was, the batting had been demoralized by the first innings failure and they looked all at sea on the fourth day. Kallis was brought down by a brute of a delivery, the picture of which would be on the front page of every newspaper (*evil grin*). Zaheer Khan toyed around with Dale Steyn and had his revenge with a few bouncers followed by his wicket caught in the gully. The rest of the team did their regulation bit of 20-25 runs each and left the field without any real conviction, at the end of which Prince was the last man standing and Indian team had done a complete turnaround of this series.

At the presentation, Dhoni was brilliant. He was spot on in pointing out the team’s batting failure and he was pointing out at the top 4. They need to get their act right going into the third test and put up a much better performance than this test. They need to be true to their name and stature and hopefully put up a score of 550+ in their first batting innings no matter what/how South Africa do in their first innings.