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3rd Test: Australia wins Sydney Test (scorecard), South Africa won Test Series 2-1.. T20 & ODI series follows.
Current Cricket Series : South Africa vs Australia, West Indies vs New Zealand. Coming Up : India in NZ 2009.
156 runs & 8 wickets remain for last day : Cape town test, Day 4.Filed under
India's tour of South Africa.
If you watched Day 4 of Cape town test between India and South Africa,
you will know two things for sure that Mr. Sourav Ganguly is in very
good form, whereas Mr. Sachin Tendulkar is fighting within himself
about what is his role in the team..
Sehwag and Jaffer departed early but present and former Indian captains made sure we come back into the match. 84 runs were  scored between
Dravid and Ganguly at a rate of 3 runs/over... but Sachin Tendulkar
must have come with a definite mind-set of playing defensively. Nearly
every Indian domestic team has 2 or 3 left arm spinner like Paul Harris
of South Africa, if not better. But as Ravi Shastri said - "Paul Harris
was made to look like Lord Harris".That debutant bowled 20 overs for 35 runs and that's when Sachin-Dravid partnership allowed South Africa to come back into the match. VVS Laxman was again his lazy self while taking the second run and then Tendulkar followed. Score - India 121 for 6 in 52 overs. Dinesh Karthik again proved his worth as a batsman and his adventurous batting started the scoreboard moving again.. but by that time, Indian tail was on show and South Africans took only 10 odd overs to demolish them. Result - India all out for 169 as Karthik stood all alone at the other end. But that's not the end of the story. Indian team had an overall lead of 210 runs, which by no means is a small target to chase on a pitch which is helping spinner from Day 1. Our team knew early wickets will bring them back in the game... Conversely, what actually happened was some attack from Graeme Smith and AB de Villiers because they knew run making will be easiest with the new ball.  They hit 9 fours in 16 overs and ended the day at 55 runs. In between, Zaheer got De Villiers and Hashim Amla was leg-before-stumps for Anil Kumble. So, if the score board seems favouring South Africans - wait a minute. Because the wicket of Amla was the perfect mode of Kumble dismissal. The ball was only 15 overs old and Kumble was not able to grip it properly. But as it got older - the grip got better and African batsmen were losing any sense of Kumble's deliveries.. All our team needs is Sreesanth, Zaheer, Munaf, Sehwag and Tendulkar to block one end tomorrow and let Kumble spin his magic on South Africa from the other end. The ball will only get softer and run making harder. This is a test match we are talking about, where unlike ODIs, fielding captain can have any many fielders on any side of wicket and place any many on the boundary as he wants...!! Dravid must employ in-out field, so that no boundaries available for them, and try to bowl maidens after maidens. We have runs on the board and South Africans don't know how to play spin. We have at 3 different kind of World Class spinners in our team, and they must work together for one last day on South African soil for that WINNING FEELING. I am pretty sure we have the upper hand on this test (and thus the series) - all we need is a belief that we are capable and deserving for a test series win in South Africa.
Related ArticlesIndia's tour of South Africa.
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