South Africa won the Ahmedabad Test in three days and have now ensured that they cannot lose the series. If anything, going by the way the Indian batsmen struggled against the new ball of the South Africans, even in the Kanpur Test can also be one that the Protease can win.
What was disappointing was that the Indian batsmen seemed to have learnt little from the first innings and what had happened in Australia and have committed the same mistakes.
Wasim Jaffer got out to the second time in the match jabbing hard at a delivery that left him. He was out regularly this way in Australia and hasn’t learnt anything from those dismissals. Batting in Test cricket is about playing with soft hands but Jaffer keeps pushing hard at the ball and ends up caught in the slips with his bat well away from his body. This is something that opening batsmen particularly the orthodox ones should not be doing and it’s a weakness that is likely to be exploited by bowlers who can get the ball to move away from him.
Rahul Dravid who is technically so sound is also jabbing hard at the ball and moreover is playing at deliveries well outside the off stump.
A lot of this is the side effect of limited overs cricket where batsmen cannot afford to have too many dot balls and so keep pushing at deliveries that they would normally leave alone. Also in limited overs cricket batsmen tend to get away because the slip fielders are removed in a matter of couple of overs and so the thick edges can go safely to third man region. Dravid has to have a long look at the videos of his batting and see for himself how far his front foot goes outside the off stump and how he lunges for deliveries he would be better off leaving alone at least at the start of his innings. This is all the more necessary on pitches where there is a bit of extra bounce and lateral movement. In recent times Dravid’s front foot drives have more of the bottom hand than the top hand controlling the shot and therefore he is not looking as solid as he does normally.
The other problem with the Indian batting lineup is that when boundaries are hard to come by and loose deliveries are not on offer they are unable to take the quick single to rotate the strike. When the ball goes toward the boundary the batsmen are able to take only two when the opposition invariably takes three. This lack of athleticism makes a huge difference to the total and in a low scoring game can be the difference between winning and losing it.
Saurav Ganguly batted splendidly. He is at his best when he is looking the ball in the eye. While it is understandable that a batsman can be tentative to start with in his case he tends to be too conscious of a particular line of attack and anticipates it which can cause problems if the ball is bowled not where he is expecting it. He may have been a touch unlucky on missing out on a century as the bat hit the ground at the same time the ball passed it but at least he had in his partnership with Dhoni ensured that India were not going to be dismissed for an embarrassing total again. The vice captain too batted with responsibility till the lapse in concentration after getting to a half century. Pathan tried to delay the end and Sreesanth true to character played to the gallery. The sad part of the India tail is that despite seeing how the opposition lower order batsmen try and stick around they don’t seem to learn anything and try and make it hard for the opposition bowlers to get wickets just as they themselves find when they are bowling.
South Africa were the more focused and more determined team as they have shown from the first Test itself. They have come with a purpose, a plan and are going all out to make it a success. As for India the less said about the purpose, plan and approach the better. Imagine losing at home in three days. What can be more telling than that?
