“The way we started in the powerplay set us back and we couldn’t find our way back in.” – Keshav Maharaj
Telford Vice | Cape Town
MARCO Jansen hadn’t played a T20I before Friday. Lungi Ngidi hadn’t played a game of any sort in 86 days, and a T20I in almost 11 months. Yet they were entrusted with the new ball in Rajkot. That didn’t happen by design: Kagiso Rabada and Wayne Parnell were ruled out with unspecified “niggles”. Three overs in, Jansen and Ngidi had removed Ruturaj Gaikwad and Shreyas Iyer.
With his first delivery of the match, Anrich Nortjé — who before this series hadn’t played for South Africa since November last year because of a hip injury, and who featured in only six of a possible 14 matches in the IPL — got rid of Ishan Kishan. That reduced India to 40/3 a ball after they had registered their worst powerplay of the rubber.
Lesser spotted fast bowlers loomed large early in a game India had to win to keep the series alive. Another rarely seen player at international level in the short, sharp stuff gave the home side a decent chance of success by yanking an innings that was languishing at 96/4 after 15 overs to a total of 169/6.
Hardik Pandya sparked a revival in stands of 41 with Rishabh Pant and 65 — off 33 — with the bristling Dinesh Karthik, who swashed and buckled a 27-ball 55. “Risks are something you need to accept and absorb when you play T20 cricket,” Karthik said in a television interview. He knows that from experience, but not in an India shirt.
Karthik made his international debut in the format at the Wanderers in December 2006 in the 10th T20I ever played, which was India’s first. Friday’s was the 1,572nd all told and India’s 163rd. Karthik has played 229 IPL games, second only to MS Dhoni’s 234, in which he has made 20 half-centuries with a highest score of 97 not out off 50 balls. But he has been involved in only 35 T20Is. His effort on Friday was his first half-century in his 30th innings.
Ngidi returned from a foot injury, sustained during his second over when he tried to stop a drive by Kishan, to end the key partnership with the help of an acrobatic running, sprawling catch by Tabraiz Shamsi at deep backward point that halted Pandya at 46 off 31. Karthik rumbled into the last over, when he holed out at deep backward square leg trying to sweep Dwaine Pretorius for six. Yes, trying to sweep the seamer. And why not: he had hit the same bowler for four and six in the same fashion earlier.
Although South Africa had blinked during the afterburner overs of India’s innings, and even though a pitch that was challenging to bat on to begin with became more inscrutable and inconsistent as the match wore on, the visitors shouldn’t have needed anything as explosive as Karthik’s blast to seal the series with a game in hand.
And a good thing, too, that that was not required. Because they couldn’t deliver anything like it on the night. Instead South Africa shambled to 35/2 in the powerplay and their reply became a procession of misery in the face of a fired-up India. Worse yet, Temba Bavuma had to retire hurt after jarring an elbow as he dived to make his ground, and when Avesh Khan felled Jansen with a bouncer that struck the batter behind the ear.
In a sign of the healthy spirit in which the series is being played, some of India’s players rushed to the scene to see if Jansen was alright. Happily he seemed to be, as evidenced by his heave to midwicket off the next ball to add to Khan’s career-best haul of 4/18.
South Africa crashed to 87 all out in 16.5 overs, their lowest total in their 151 T20Is and only the fourth time they have been dismissed in double figures. India’s victory, by 82 runs, was their most emphatic over South Africa — they broke the record they set in Visakhapatnam on Tuesday, when they won by 48 runs — and their fifth biggest overall.
Bavuma struggled to hang onto a bat after he was hurt, so it was up to Keshav Maharaj to do the heavy lifting and hold the microphone. “The way we started in the powerplay set us back and we couldn’t find our way back in,” Maharaj said on television.
And so to Bangalore, where the series will climax on Sunday. South Africa hit the ground running to win the first two games, but have since been going backwards. India seemed ambushed in those matches, but have shot their way out of trouble to level the rubber.
“It will be a good test of our cricket, to see how far we’ve come,” Maharaj told a press conference. He’s not wrong, despite the fact that South Africa had won 13 of their last 15 T20Is before the series. Teams who do that, and win the first two games of their next rubber, should know how to get the job done. South Africa have blown two chances to do so. They have one left.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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