Guwahati: When South Africa batted, Kuldeep Yadav said the pitch felt like a “road”. In less than 24 hours, India discovered bumps and steep curves, hitherto unforeseen, on the same “road” at the Assam Cricket Association ground in Barsapara. By stumps on Day 3, the hosts were truly out of track to salvage the two-Test series against South Africa.
The Indian batting horror show – one of the worst in recent memory – was facilitated by 6 feet 8 Marco Jansen, a familiar face on the IPL circuit. He generated a steep bounce that no Indian pacer did and with the injudiciousness of the top-order, led by skipper Rishabh Pant, the Indian batting collapsed like a pack of cards. From 95-1 at one stage with half an hour to go for the first break, India were reduced to 122-7 on either side of 11 am tea. Washington Sundar (48) and Kuldeep Yadav (19) resisted for 35 overs, but offie Simon Harmer (3-43) got the Tamil Nadu allrounder with one that left him. Jansen (6-48) polished off the rest of the tail and the 288-run lead all but sealed the fate of the game. With South Africa reaching 26-0 by the close of play after choosing not to enforce follow-on, all India can hope for is a draw. But that will need a miracle. Jansen, ahead of the day’s play, was seen having a chat with Dale Steyn. When Jansen told him that the Barsapara pitch felt a bit like SuperSport Park in Pretoria, in reference to the bit of up and down bounce, Steyn told his protégé to hit the pitch hard and try the cross-seam delivery. The 25-year-old tried to follow the master’s advice, even though the barren first spell was more traditional attacking-the-stump line which Yashasvi Jaiswal (58) and KL Rahul (22) negotiated. But both fell to spinners, Rahul nicking one off left-arm spinner Keshav Maharaj and Jaiswal unable to deal with the bounce that Harmer generated to be caught at point. Soon after, another failure by No. 3 Sai Sudharsan opened the floodgates and Jansen barged in. Jansen resorted to the short-ball tactic. In the last over before tea, Jurel, for reasons better known to him, tried to pull him. The mistimed shot was beautifully caught by Maharaj running back. Suddenly the score read 102-4. “With not much happening off the seam, I tried the short ball against Jurel and it worked. Then the team decided during the break to use this as a tactic,” Jansen explained. Little did the lanky pacer know that Pant, India’s best batter on paper, will be the first to fall for the short-ball trap immediately after the break. The way Pant tried to charge Jansen and nicked him gave one the feeling that he didn’t learn from the first two days of keeping that the pitch tends to get significantly easier when the ball gets old. Jansen celebrated Pant’s wicket. But when asked later in the day whether the Indian captain’s shot selection came as a pleasant surprise for him, the South African pacer defended the left-hander. “Pant and Jurel both are fantastic players of the short ball. On another day, the ball could easily have been sailing over my head into the stands. Batters have to find ways to score runs, sometimes you succeed, sometimes you don’t,” Jansen said. Nitish Reddy, who used to play Jansen regularly at the Sunrisers Hyderabad nets, looked like a fish out of water against the paceman. He failed to keep a snorter out and Aiden Markram completed a diving catch at third slip. “Reddy has often hit me 50 rows back into the stands during IPL practice,” Jansen said, but that hardly mattered on Monday. After Jansen demolished the Indian middle-order, Washington, batting once again at No. 8, and Kuldeep showed the team’s super seniors that there were not many devils in the pitch. They were ready to buy time, play the spinners with respect and tire out Jansen, something that Pant & Co. couldn’t. But with seven wickets already down, all they could do was delay the inevitable and their long-winding association of three hours yielded 72 runs, which was not enough. “We live on hope,” the ever-optimist Washington said at the end of day’s play. But he, too, can read the writing on the wall — another humiliating whitewash against a SENA team at home.
