After starting beautifully, South Africa produced a dramatic batting collapse to gift the initiative to India.
South African captain Graeme Smith had won the toss and elected to bat.
It was a poor start once again for Smith who too often gets exposed around the off stump line. For a world class player, he gets bowled way too often through the gate.
Hashim Amla and debutant Alviro Petersen set about building a partnership and scored 209 runs together. Both players had reached their century, looked largely untroubled, and had batted at a really good rate of about 4 to the over.
Petersen was dismissed as soon as he had reached his hundred, and then the rot set it. Wickets kept falling at regular intervals, and the runs were getting scarcer and scarcer. Amla and Jacques Kallis were both out trying to be positive, for that one can’t fault them, but perhaps the shot selections need reviewing. Amla rarely plays the hook, especially to a ball outside off stump.
Kallis went for the slog sweep, and perhaps wasn’t ‘in enough’ to play the shot at that time. Ashwell Prince and JP Duminy were both out to Harbhjan Singh. Singh enjoys bowling to left handers, and has a great record at Eden Gardens too.
It’s a massive concern that Duminy can’t get past a few overs out in the middle. I don’t know we can say he is out of form as such, he just can’t defend a few for us to tell what he can do. The patience from the selectors must be starting to wear thin.
Things then went from bad to worse. A run out to AB de Villiers was suicide, and the South African tail didn’t show much resistance either. From 218/1, we lost 48/8 to end the day at 266/9.
We’ve just gifted India a golden opportunity on a pitch that looked fine to bat on for the majority of the game. Innings 2 and 3 are usually high scoring at Eden Gardens, meaning India can make use of the best batting conditions on days 2 and 3. It’ll require a repeat of Dale Steyn’s Nagpur heroics to rescue South Africa here.
Just as South Africa’s batting relies on Smith, Amla and Kallis to make the bulk of the runs. It’s time others stepped up to the plate and produced some match winning performances like Duminy’s innings in Melbourne many moons ago.
Indian coach Gary Kirsten applauded the tenacity shown by his bowlers. “When you looked at it at tea, we were in trouble. Let’s be honest about that. All credit to the bowlers for turning it around. They showed tremendous resilience. They have bowled pretty well this series without the rewards. When you’re picking four bowlers every Test, it’s an enormous workload on them. We’ve got to give them credit for the way they run in Test after Test. This is our fourth on the trot” said Kirsten.
Kirsten also suggested there were no demons in the pitch which is ominous for the Proteas having to bowl at India tomorrow, “If you’re not getting wickets because the ball’s doing a bit, you’ve got to build pressure. And there’s no better way of building pressure than getting a few wickets. It happened to us in the first Test. We were going nicely with the bat, we lost a wicket and pressure was created. We did that in this game. We mustn’t always be looking for assistance to get wickets. When you can create pressure by doing some creative things on the field, which I thought we did today, batsmen play very differently” said Kirsten.
“We didn’t feel it took too much turn. We didn’t feel that it offered that much assistance to the seamers. There’s a long way to go in the Test, but it looks a fairly good wicket at the moment. There was a lot less grass on the wicket today than there was yesterday, otherwise we would have gone for three seamers” continued Kirsten.
There is a massive road to climb for South Africa to get back into this match. A few quick wickets here and there can change the match, but at the moment India hold the upper hand.
