Hosts South Africa took a 1-0 lead in the 3-Test series against the visiting Indian team after they clinched a 72-run victory in the series opener in Cape Town. The win came despite the hosts being bowled out for a paltry 130 in the second innings, which set the visitors a target of 209 in the fourth innings.
South Africa did not have the services of Dale Steyn, who was ruled out of the Test match and the entire series, in defence of the target; yet they completed the job quite easily, with the remaining three pacers combining well to skittle out Team India for 135. Vernon Philander led the hosts’ charge in the fourth innings, collecting 6 wickets in 15.4 overs to knock the stuffing off the Indian team’s sails.
Test Match Review
When they reflect back on the Test match, Team India will rue that they had their moments in the match but failed to pin down their opponents when they had them on the floor. Teams have to be ruthless and overpowering against strong sides like South Africa and cannot let them off the hook. Team India did that, and they paid a price for that.
A honest assessment of the performance of the Indian team would be that while the selection of players was aggressive and the bowlers mastered the conditions, the batsmen were found wanting and let the team down badly. Not once, but twice.
After dismissing the hosts for 286 on Day I, India had the opportunity to post a big first innings score. Instead, the Indian batsmen had no answers to the discipline of the South African bowlers and lost three wickets in 11 overs on the first day itself. In the first innings, 5 of the top 6 batsmen were dismissed playing strokes which can be classified as ‘poor’. It took Hardik Pandya’s counter-attacking 93 and a vigilantly-compiled 25 by Bhuvneshwar Kumar to take Team India, who were at one stage 92-7, to a respectable 209.
In the second innings, at least six batsmen were dismissed playing strokes they could have avoided. Even captain Virat Kohli, who was excellent in reading deliveries, made one poor choice of stroke that resulted in his dismissal; Kohli, who left or middled the ball well, attempted to work to the leg-side in front of his pad, but his bat made no contact with the ball and he was trapped LBW.
The poor performance of the batsmen is best illustrated by the fact that among all the Indian batsmen, Bhuvneshwar Kumar faced the most deliveries in the match – more than the aggregate of Murali Vijay and Virat Kohli faced in the match.
Further, the highest score in the two innings came from the batsmen batting at number seven and eight respectively. Further, the highest partnership for India in the two innings were the 99-run eighth wicket association in the first innings and the 49-run eighth wicket stand in the second innings.
India had a few positives to emerge from the Test match too. On the selection front, Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah justified their selection in the XI; Pandya contributed with bat and ball – though he could have done a lot better on both fronts, while Bumrah picked up important wickets in both innings.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar was sensational with the ball and has more or less nailed his place in the XI for the remaining two Tests. Behind the stumps, Wriddhiman Saha rode his way into the record books, becoming the first Indian wicket-keeper to grab 10 catches in a Test match; by doing so, he joined an elite club of four other wicket-keepers who had accomplished the feat in the past.
Courtesy Saha’s 10 catches behind the stumps, and his counterpart Quinton de Kock’s 6 grabs with the gloves, the Cape Town Test match became the first Test match in history where the two named wicket-keepers together had pouched 16 catches.
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