Ranchi rains India runs, SA wickets

How many more South Africa wickets would have fallen had bad light not taken 34 overs out of the day’s play?

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

A monsoon of Indian runs followed by the clatter, like gravel on a tin roof, of South African wickets.

The second day of the third men’s Test in Ranchi on Sunday stuck to the script used for much of the rest of the series.

Virat Kohli declared after India piled up 497/9. Then South Africa shambled to 9/2 in the five overs they faced before bad light ended play.

Worse, the players dismissed are Dean Elgar, who has scored the most runs and faced the most balls for the visitors in the series, and Quinton de Kock, whose promotion to an opening berth was the grandest part of the plan to cure the virus that has struck South Africa’s batting.

Both gloved catches to the wicketkeeper having tried to leave short, aggressive deliveries bowled by Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav.

Other South Africans will be relieved to know the gloom cut short Sunday’s proceedings by 34 overs: who knows how many more wickets would have fallen had they been bowled.

Rohit Sharma converted his overnight 117 not out into 212, his first Test double century.

Sharma, who made 176 and 127 in the first Test in Visakhapatnam, took his aggregate for the series to 529 — more than any other India batter has scored in a rubber against South Africa.

Having reached three figures with a six off Dane Piedt on Saturday, Sharma went to his second hundred with a pulled six off Lungi Ngidi to the 13th ball after lunch.

Ajinkya Rahane resumed on 83 and forged to 115 before being caught behind off George Linde in the 10th over before lunch to end a stand of 267, a record for India’s fourth wicket against South Africa.

The Indians attacked overtly after Rahane’s dismissal, scoring 191 runs in the 41 overs they faced before the declaration — 4.66 an over. 

Yadav led the way, smashing the first two balls he faced — bowled by Linde — for six and following that with three more maximums in the debutant left-arm spinner’s next over. Yadav ran only a single in his 10-ball 31.

Linde, who was summoned from South Africa after Keshav Maharaj injured a shoulder during the second Test in Pune, bowled with discipline in his 31 overs — more than any other member of the attack — and took 4/133.

Off-spinner Piedt, Linde’s Cobras teammate, will be less satisfied with his lot.

He went into the match having sweated it out for 38 overs for his return of 1/209 in the first Test, and the 20 sixes he has conceded in the rubber is the most by any bowler in any Test series.

Piedt, who was also hit for nine fours in the innings, sent down a dozen of his 18 overs before he bowled a maiden.

He smiled broadly as his sixth straight scoreless delivery was confirmed and accepted Elgar’s two-handed high five. Then he reeled off another two maidens. 

Piedt finished with 1/101 and might have got the joke that he shouldn’t be wearing 63 on his back. Instead he should wear No. 64.

Because that’s what he’s bowled in this series: sixes and fours.

First published by TMG Digital.

SA ring changes but call goes unanswered

“I was just hoping for a wicket somewhere,” Anrich Nortjé on dismissing Virat Kohli to take his first Test wicket.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

FIVE changes to their XI failed to move South Africa out of India’s shadow on the first day of the third men’s Test in Ranchi on Saturday.

And that despite the visitors enjoying their most successful first hour of the series to reduce India to 39/3, largely thanks to Kagiso Rabada’s rasping first spell of 2/15.

But, at stumps, which bad light forced six overs after tea, the home side were 224 runs to the good with seven wickets still standing.

Rohit Sharma became Dane Piedt’s least favourite batter in reaching 117 not out, his third century in four innings.

No-one has hit more sixes this year than Sharma’s 17, all in this rubber, and no bowler has been hammered for more sixes in a series than the 11 Sharma has sent arching off Piedt.

The hapless off-spinner might have wished he hadn’t been one of the straws clutched at in the wake of two heavy defeats.

Heinrich Klaasen and George Linde — in for Aiden Markram and Keshav Maharaj, both injured — earned debuts, and Theunis de Bruyn, Vernon Philander and Senuran Muthusamy were axed in favour of Zubayr Hamza, Lungi Ngidi and Piedt.

Quinton de Kock handed the wicketkeeping gloves to Klaasen and will fill the vacancy, left by Markram, at the top of the order.

Linde looked like making a dream start when Sharma blipped his third delivery towards short leg — where Hamza couldn’t hold a difficult chance.

Sharma would have been gone for 28, his stand with Ajinkya Rahane would have been capped at 21 instead of resuming on Sunday at 185, and India would have been 60/4.

Ah well. At least Anrich Nortjé will always have the memory of trapping Virat Kohli in front with an inswinger, which followed two outswingers, for his first Test scalp.  

“I was just hoping for a wicket somewhere,” Nortjé told reporters.

Let no-one remind him that the only other bowler to dismiss India’s captain in the series, Muthusamy, is no longer in the team.

First published by the Sunday Times.

It’s bad. Could it get worse?

India’s 13th win over South Africa was also their biggest against them, and only the second time they have beaten them by an innings in their 38 Tests.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

HOW bad is it? Bad, but not worse than it’s been in the recent past — twice.

South Africa’s thrashing, by an innings and 137 runs, by India in the second men’s Test in Pune on Sunday confirmed their third defeat in four series.

Having been told to follow on 326 runs behind, South Africa were dismissed for 189 in the seventh over after tea on the fourth day.

The best of their resistance was Dean Elgar’s 48, Temba Bavuma’s 38, Vernon Philander’s 37 and Keshav Maharaj’s 22. No-one else reached double figures.

It’s the last time Maharaj will pick up a bat or ball for up to three weeks.

The shoulder injury he sustained while diving in the field on Friday has ruled him out for the third Test in Ranchi, which starts on Saturday.

Maharaj’s stoicism has been one of the few less negative aspects — it’s difficult to find positives — of South Africa’s performance in this series.

He is their highest wicket-taker with a half-dozen scalps, although they were taken at an average of 85.66, and the 127 overs he bowled is almost twice as many as anyone else in the visitors’ attack.

Maharaj faced 229 balls and his 72 in the first innings in Pune was his first Test half-century.

He will be replaced in the squad by George Linde, the uncapped left-arm spinner who took match figures of 11/131 for the Cobras against the Lions in Potchefstroom in the opening round of franchise first-class fixtures last week.

Umesh Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja led India’s surge to victory with three wickets each.

The Indians caught superbly and ill-considered strokes by the South Africans did the rest. 

Worryingly, the batters were as likely to commit serious errors facing India’s fast bowlers as they were against their old bogeymen, the spinners.  

Elgar’s sliced hoik to long-off off Ravichandran Ashwin and Theunis de Bruyn clumsy fiddle down the leg side to Yadav were the prime examples.  

And that on a pitch that, while recognisably Indian, was far from unrecognisable for the South Africans. 

India’s 13th win over South Africa was also their biggest against them, and only the second time they have beaten them by an innings in their 38 Tests.

It sealed a run of 11 successful home series, a world record. Seven of them have been achieved under Virat Kohli’s masterful captaincy.

India have lost only one of the 32 Tests they have played at home since being beaten twice by England in November and December 2012.

For Faf du Plessis, his team and their supporters, this — South Africa’s 21st series loss in the 88 rubbers they have played since re-admission — will feel like rock bottom.

But it’s happened before.

Between August 2004 and March 2005, South Africa lost in Sri Lanka and India and returned home to go down to England before recovering with victory over Zimbabwe in another home series.

Then, from December 2005 to July 2006, they lost to Australia, home and away, beat New Zealand at home and then went down in Sri Lanka.

Depending on whether your glass if half-full or half-empty, that means the straits are not unprecedentedly dire — or that they will get worse when England arrive in December for a series of four Tests.

First published by TMG Digital.

SA A struggle with bat and ball

Only Bjorn Fortuin has a good economy rate and only Reeza Hendricks, Heinrich Klaasen and George Linde have made 50s.

TELFORD VICE in London

NO-ONE has scored more runs than Heinrich Klaasen on the South Africa A men’s tour of India and Reeza Hendricks has scored the only century.

Only Yuzvendra Chahal has taken more wickets than Bjorn Fortuin, Junior Dala and Anrich Nortjé, and Fortuin is third in terms of economy rate.   

So how come the visitors have lost all three one-day matches?

Answering that question isn’t as stiff a challenge as pronouncing the name of the city where all the games have been played: Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala.

The state, on the south-east coast, is among India’s highest rainfall areas and all three games have been affected by wet outfields.

In the first match, on Thursday, Fortuin and Hendricks — who sent down four overs of his occasional off-spin — were the only South African bowlers to concede fewer than a run a ball as the Indians piled up 327/6 in 47 overs.

Hendricks’ 108-ball 110 and Klaasen’s 58 kept their team’s hopes alive, but Hendricks’ dismissal in the 39th over was the start of a slide of five wickets for 50 runs that saw South Africa A dismissed for 258.

Two days later the visitors made 162/5 in 21 overs, an effort significantly enhanced by No. 6 George Linde hammering an unbeaten 52 off 25 balls. 

The home side won by eight wickets with an over to spare, and this time none of the visitors’ bowlers escaped a mauling.

On Monday Klaasen’s 44 was the top score in the 207/8 the South Africans put up in 30 overs.

The Indians got home by four wickets with 13 balls to spare, and with Lutho Sipamla the only bowler to go for fewer than seven runs an over.   

Doubtless the conditions have been made doubly foreign for the visitors by the effects of the rain — factors that seem to have affected the bowlers more than the batters.

Temba Bavuma’s qualities as a captain will be questioned, but this isn’t the first time he’s been at the helm at international level.

He led a South Africa Academy side to a six-wicket win over their Bangladesh counterparts in a T20 in Pretoria in August 2011, and he did so from the front with an unbeaten 67.

Bavuma has also captained the Lions 23 times across all formats, winning 15 of those games and losing four.

“It is an opportunity for me to strengthen my case for selection, but also from the leadership point of view it is to embrace the responsibility that I have been given and to grow in that aspect of my game,” Bavuma told reporters in India before the series.

His major problem is that Fortuin is his only bowler with a reasonable economy rate in the rubber: 5.88.

Not so Dala, Nortjé, Beuran Hendricks and Linde, who are bleeding runs at between 7.27 and 8.53 runs an over.

The other side of the equation also doesn’t look so good, what with Klaasen and Linde the only South Africans with half-centuries to their names.

How do the Indians compare? Three of their bowlers are running at fewer than a run a ball, and their batters have scored four 50s between them.

You don’t need to be able to say Thiruvananthapuram to know why they have won the series.

First published by TMG Digital.