I'd be very surprised if India don't win tomorrow. Getting Kallis was huge. I though think it will be a nerve wracking 'few overs to go before stumps' win.And that is exactly how it transpired. India escaped by the skin of its teeth to register an innings victory with just 9 mandatory balls left to be bowled. (They could have squeezed in a couple of extra overs, if required).
Rather than give you a detailed breakdown of how it transpired, I will pen some thoughts that occurred to me in the aftermath of the game.
a) South Africa batted a total of 789 balls in the inning and scored 290 runs to fall short of making India bat again by 57 runs.
b) Hashim Amla looked like he could bat for another two days if required and, inexplicably, chose not to press home the advantage he had on the Indians. There are two ways to go about drawing a Test - the seemingly safer way is to dourly defend your way to the finish line, hoping that a series of dead bats will inch you to the promised land. This is a strategy that I have seen achieve success only on very rare occasions. The second strategy is to score runs while batting for time. This means that when you get a bad ball you put it away, you run aggressively, force the opposing team to spread the field as they do not want to go into a run-chase at the end of the match.
The SAffers chose to adopt Plan A, defend their way to the draw. A very bad idea. When you bat 130 overs and do not even get to 350 runs, you let the opposition know that they can keep attacking you without worrying that they will get punished if they do not bowl well. This strategy is fraught with risks. For example, JP Duminy got out to a ball that he could have very easily smashed to the cover boundary. Hashim Amla got a lot of (deserved) bouquets for his marathon effort, but I lay a lot of the blame on his shoulders, too. He was untroubled by the bowlers and was reading the ball out of the hand and off the pitch very easily. He should have put more pressure on the Indians by scoring more runs. He batted an over short of 400 balls (that's almost 66 overs) and scored just 123 runs (a strike rate of 31 runs per 100 balls). For most of the innings, the Indians were giving him easy runs (more on that in the next point) and he refused to take the hosts up on their offer. Sheesh.
c) I am a big fan of MS Dhoni's captaincy. But I must admit that there were a couple of head-scratchers in this Test. He did not put any pressure on Alviro Petersen, on debut no less, except in the form of a regulation 2 slips, 1 gully field. Masada, did you not see how shaky our debutants were in the previous Test when they had a forward short-leg and other close-in fielders around them? When Harbhajan Singh began his spells, he always started with just a forward short-leg and a slip and that was it! Come on! I understand that Bhajji likes the buffer of not giving up early boundaries as he may not be accurate, but the lack of close-in fielders also acts as a pressure release for the batsmen who then milk Economy through square-leg. Ugh!
Finally, about half-way through the day, Masada decided that Hashim Amla was not going to get out. Amla batted well, but he batted for most of the 5th day with only a slip for company. Masada spread the field and Amla obliged by not taking a single off the first three balls. From the fourth ball onwards the Indian captain brought the field in to prevent the run and Amla tried to take a single. Knowing that Amla was not going to take a single off the first three balls and was just dead-batting them, why didn't the Indians keep an attacking field? Aaargh!
d) In the end, Masada's gambles paid of and, overall, he did a fabulous job of rotating his three strike bowlers (in the absence of Zaheer Khan) such that none of them got tired and they looked to take wickets all the time. Ishant Sharma wasted the time he spent bowling to Mornie Morkel when he (Morkel) was fresh at the crease. Of the first 18 balls that Sharma bowled to Morkel, the #11 batsman, the SAffer was forced to put bat to only 1 ball. The other 17 went harmlessly by to the keeper. What a waste, especially when there were less than 20 overs to bowl in the day and Mornie was fresh at the crease and visibly nervous.
e) For me, the most striking feature of Masada's captaincy was how calm he looked right to the end. There is something to be said about looking up at a leader, when things are starting to tighten, and see that he is unruffled. I don't know about his teammates, but I was more relaxed because I felt that he had things under control and wasn't panicking just yet. With 9 Test wins in just 13 matches as captain, he does a lot of things right.
2 comments:
JQ: Spot on all the way. RSA missed a trick in not putting more pressure runs-wise, especially given Dhoni's defensiveness in field-settings.
Samir, RSA has shown, over the years, a dogged fixation for sticking with Plan A and not improvising. Plan A called for batting long periods of time and they tried to do that. The larger context required someone like De Villiers to play a more attacking game. Amla was shoring up one end, so they could have put more pressure, but they chose not to do so.
That cost them the Test match. Narrowly, but surely.
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