SA tour of India, Sept 29-Dec 7

[Arthur Crabtree]

I saw a few turn and bounce off the spinners when I was watching, having read cricinfo saying a few were keeping low. I didn't see any keep low myself. Obviously the pace wasn't true because India kept slicing/scooping drives into the ring.

[Arthur Crabtree]

I suppose India might have been a little careless, being so far ahead in the game.

[Dr Cricket]

watch Manjreker video on Cricinfo on Do mordern batsman trust their defence.

it is spot on.

[Dr Cricket]

http://www.espncricinfo.com/india-v-sou ... 44463.html

[Arthur Crabtree]

Different now in some cases because of drs. You can't just get on the front foot and use your pad, and you won't get away with bat and pad together. Though, this doesn't apply in this series.

Wouldn't mind the tv coverage using ball tracking, just for the viewer.

[mikesiva]

AB out for nine, but Amla and FAF are still there...four down.

Both out for 39...six down.

[Dr Cricket]

Holy crap SA are showing fight with the bat.
SA have definitely made the pitch look worse than it should be, crazy to think Australia performed better than SA in india.

SA survived close to 80 overs already, why couldn't they do think in the first innings where india would have been proper scared considering SA would be close to getting a lead or parity.

[mikesiva]

All the batsmen out now...into the tail. Can't see South Africa getting close. India should win by 100 runs or thereabouts.

[Aidan11]

Decent fight by SA but it was always going to be a losing cause.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Well done to India on a series win against the world's best side. Should be good for ranking points. Ashwin filling his boots again.

[meninblue]

What a comprehensive series win this has been. Well played everyone

[The Professor]

Thinking about the pitch here and the criticism it got I thought about the Ranji Trophy and whether they suffer the same issues. Looking at the results scores are either really high or really low. Seems that in domestic cricket they are not getting the balance right.

[meninblue]

Thinking about the pitch here and the criticism it got I thought about the Ranji Trophy and whether they suffer the same issues. Looking at the results scores are either really high or really low. Seems that in domestic cricket they are not getting the balance right.

When South Africa won ODI series there was not much complain about pitches from Saffers side. That time Ravi Shastri complained about Mumbai wicket as India were losing. Now it is obvious saffers will complain as they lost.

If they cannot play spin in particular series then the wicket is bad, but if we cannot play pace and bounce then our batsmen are bad.
Fact is our batsmen and bowlers played relatively better to win the series.


In ranji some batsmen are scoring double tons. Paras i think has two this season. There are lot of tons and 50's as well. Wickets are also falling like Dinda took 7 fer in some match recently. Some other bowlers too ahve five fers.

[Dr Cricket]

Although saying that getting the balance right for domestic games are always more difficult think England will have the same issues india suffered 5-6 years ago with so many draws since the bowlers can not take 20 wickets in Test match quality pitches Strauss wants.
Butcher made the point recently as well the reason pitches are bowling friendly is because they can't take wicket without it.
india made pitches bowling friendly because about 50-60% of games ended in draws, now Dravid saying it is going too far and should mirror test cricket. Getting balance right is tough because the players are not obviously the same standard.

[Red Devil]

The fact that Ind scored 215 in first innings and then SA made 185 batting last tells you that the pitch was not a disgrace.

When ind play away from home and struggle to score and occasionally get blown away by quality seamers on pitches that favour them, the riposte is always that the other side managed to score runs - so i don't really accept any of the criticism about pitches in India.

As for the matches being over in 3 days - I would much rather that than have flat wickets that end in draws. I think pitches in ind should turn throughout the test and that also diminishes the advantage of the toss. if SA had batted vaguely reasonably in their first innings this match would have gone into the 4th day.

Ind should use home advantage and over the next 18 months of home tests we should be keeping the same approach A side with quality spinners like Pak may cause us some serious problems and require a rethink - we had that problem with Swann and Mont before, but other than that this approach should be fine.

No doubt when we play away from home again, we'll get battered on seam friendly wickets and no-one will say anything about the pitch. We need to remember to build a seam attack for those series as well - there should be some hard work going into Umesh, Aaron, Ishant, Shami, Bhuvi etc to make sure they are ready and able to take the responsibility when we play away - and are working on their batting too so that we don't have a stupidly long tail that gets blown away in every innings.