A battering innings from Justin Kemp put India out of the second one-dayer and gave South Africa a lead which cannot be beaten. Kemp came in to bat with South Africa reeling, but by the time the innings ended it was the Indian team that was trying to recover from the onslaught that had derailed their ambitions to level the series. Kemp was helped by Andrew Hall whose selection had made ripples in the South African camp to the extent that Greame Smith and Jaques Kallis’ concentration was affected and they played truly forgettable shots to be dismissed without troubling the scorers. There were unpleasant scenes but in the end the decision of the selectors proved right as Hall built that partnership with Kemp that took the game away from the Indians.
As has happened so often in the past, the Indians were not able to deliver the killer punch after having the Proteas on the ropes and once the recovery was complete there was not much the Indians could do. The Indians may have been bowled out for a meager score here as well as at Durban but the bowling is also a cause for concern after the Cape Town performance and if anything, the performances show that India may have to look at a new set of bowlers for future one-dayers after this tour. Zaheer and Kumble were the exceptions with both bowling quite superbly. Kumble was his usual economic self giving hardly anything away and Zaheer’s first spell was a terrific one where he got the scalps of Smith and Kallis. It’s the second spell of the Indian bowlers when they are under the cosh that is worrying for then even Zaheer got clobbered as did everybody else. What Kumble’s spell and the earlier spell from Harbahjan showed is that irrespective of the pitches Indias strength will always be spin which is a commodity that is not seen often by other teams and so is not as easy to belt around as medium pacers.
The medium pacers are just the right speed and they also bowl the right length for the big hitters of the opposition to prosper as Kemp did while getting his first ton in limited overs cricket. It was some massive hitting that took him to his second fifty in just 22 balls and he treated the medium pacers as spin bowlers. There was hardly any change of pace nor was there any variation in the line of attack by the Indian medium pacers. Dravid also could have brought back Tendulkar when the medium pacers were being hit out of the ground, for his slower deliveries would have made it that much harder for Kemp and Hall to hit. Both however used the extra pace of the seamers to give South Africa a total that they would never have envisaged when they were 6 wickets down for only 76. That the South Africans scored another 198 while losing only one more wicket is an indication of how well they batted as also how badly the Indians bowled.
The Indian batting showed marginal improvement and that too due to the efforts of Dravid and Dhoni otherwise there was the same collapse that occurred in Durban. It was good to see Dravid come in at No. 3 but surely Dinesh Karthick is not a No. 5 batsman for India. Once again the selection of the final eleven has not been right and this is where India needs to shed off its stubbornness and look to getting the right balance, else the series will be the most one-sided one that can ever be.
