NAGPUR: Neither South Africa nor India itself would have imagined that Ashwin and Jadeja will root out whole South African batting line up inside the first session of Day 2 of this third Test match in Nagpur.
Yes! It happened, South Africa has been bundled out for just 79 runs in the first innings of third Test, their 13th lowest total in Long format, first against India.
That is precisely what transpired, though, as Ashwin and Jadeja spun a web of ridiculous I-can’t-play-these-deliveries to bowl South Africa out for 79 runs in 33.1 overs. That first innings of 215 now looks pretty good for India, with the lead, after the first innings, at 136 runs.
Ashwin (16.1-6-32-5) was the main man again, picking up yet another five-for, but Jadeja (12-3-33-4) wasn’t too far behind, taking four wickets of his own, while Amit Mishra (3-0-9-1) chipped in with a wicket as well, the important one of JP Duminy (35, 65b, 1×4, 2×6), the only batsman who looked remotely like a batsman in this South Africa innings.
The first over of day two was a sign of things to come. Ashwin beat the bat of Dean Elgar off the first four deliveries of the morning, and then a carom ball that came the other way took the inside edge and cannoned onto the stumps.
South Africa had begun the day on 11/2, and lost Elgar without getting off the mark in the morning, before soon enough, it was a stunning 12/4.
Ashwin picked up the prized wicket of Hashim Amla, whose sweep shot attempt only ended up taking a slice of the back of his bat and looping up to Ajinkya Rahane at first slip. Then came the most important wicket of them all. Ravindra Jadeja was unlucky a few times in the previous matches to not pick up De Villiers, but this time the left-armer would not be denied as the great man misjudged the pace and bounce of the delivery to give a leading edge back to the bowler.
Nothing can give a team more of a lift than getting De Villiers out for a duck, but Duminy and Faf Du Plessis brought a semblance of sanity to the proceedings by putting on 23 runs together, before insanity creeped in again as Du Plessis played a pathetic shot.
Just when some kind of momentum was building for South Africa, with both batsmen looking settled – or at least as settled as you can look on this wicket – Du Plessis decided to go for a lofted drive over the offside and Jadeja snuck the ball through bat and pad to knock over the woodwork.
Duminy was the only one who looked capable of staying for a while, and even the left-hander was lucky to survive with Virat Kohli, who should never be in the slips, dropping a simple catch. The left-hander, though, stuck to his task, and with a little help from Simon Harmer the score chugged along closer to 100.
It was just a matter of time, though, before the wickets came tumbling down again, and so it did, as South Africa’s torrid time with the bat in India hit another low.
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