“With the bat, we just didn’t pitch up.” – Temba Bavuma
Telford Vice | Cape Town
FOR a while there in Visakhapatnam on Tuesday, Anrich Nortjé had equalled his most expensive over in T20Is. Then the message came from on high to the umpires that the third delivery, a vicious bouncer, had screamed to the boundary after ricocheting off the grille of Ruturaj Gaikwad’s helmet. Unlike what had been decided on the field, neither bat nor gloves were involved.
So four runs were chalked off Nortjé’s account, leaving the 20 he conceded to Steve Smith in the last over of the innings at Newlands in February 2020 unmatched as his biggest hiding yet in the format. Not that Gaikwad’s assault was far behind qualitatively as well as quantitatively, what with him slamming fours through point, mid-on, midwicket and third. That the last ball of the over eluded Gaikwad’s horizontally slung bat and earned not a run only cast what had gone before in stark relief.
Gaikwad and Ishan Kishan were rampant in their 60-ball stand of 97, India’s highest opening partnership of the series and their highest in the 18 T20Is they have played against South Africa. Only eight times in the 64 games in the format they have played at home have their first-wicket pair scored more runs. Thus their total of 179/5 would have disappointed them.
Gaikwad and Kishan took 10 or more runs off an over four times. After they were separated, in the 10th over, India reached double figures in an over only three more times — two of them in the throes of the slog at the end of the innings.
India were 48 without loss after the first five overs. They scored 49/1 in the next five, then 41/2 and another 41/2 to finish. Somehow, we saw 15 fewer runs in the last half of the innings compared to the first. And that despite first David Miller and Rassie van der Dussen, the owners of two of the safest pairs of hands in the game, putting down catches five balls apart in the 14th and 15th overs. Without Hardik Pandya’s late blast of 31 not out off 21, the home side might not have escaped the 140s.
South Africa reeled them back with canny bowling. Kagiso Rabada went for a dozen runs in his second over and 11 in his last, the penultimate of the innings. But the other two cost just four each. Wayne Parnell was hit for a dozen off the last, but only 20 in his other three. Dwaine Pretorius’ first two overs, both in the first half of the innings when Gaikwad and Kishan were going strong, yielded nine runs each. His other two went for 11. Nortjé bounced back from his 16-run mauling to limit the damage to seven in the only other over he bowled. South Africa’s spin suit wasn’t as strong. Tabraiz Shamsi and Keshav Maharaj had a combined economy rate of 10.00. The seamers banked a rate of 8.21.
But, not for the first time, the bowlers were let down. Or was it that India, having lost their way with the ball and crumbled when faced with the South Africans’ determination at the crease in the first two games, found a way to not only survive but prosper?
With Bhuvneshwar Kumar all but unhittable in his first two overs, when he had the ball zigging and zagging at will and went for only seven runs, and Yuzvendra Chahal doing much the same, albeit noticeably more slowly, in his haul of 3/20, the visitors had nowhere to go but to Rajkot for Friday’s match with bloodied noses. None of their partnerships reached 30. Neither did any of their batters. Maharaj’s strike rate — 137.50 for his eight-ball 11 — was their highest and the only one of 130.00 or more. The tone was set in the first 10 overs of their reply, when they slumped to 63/4 — 34 runs and three wickets worse off than their opponents were at the same stage of their innings. They were hemmed in by intelligent bowling and cleaned up by a flawless display of catching.
“With the bat, we just didn’t pitch up,” Temba Bavuma said in his television interview after his team had been bowled out for 131 to earn India victory by 48 runs, their biggest victory over South Africa in the format. “We didn’t get the partnerships and we didn’t have momentum.”
At the Kotla on Thursday, Van der Dussen and Miller were key to the successful chase of a record target of 212. In Cuttack on Sunday, Heinrich Klaasen stood tall with his career-best T20I score to reel in another win. Indeed, going into Tuesday’s match, India had lost five of their six completed T20Is against South Africa at home.
Even so, an India team without Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah — who have been rested — and Ravindra Jadeja, Deepak Chahar and Suryakumar Yadav — who are injured — and under the guidance of first-time captain Rishabh Pant remain an India team. As South Africa have proved, they are beatable. But rarely easily. Therein lay the kernel of a series that remains rudely alive with two games to play.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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