South Africa v India tests - Jan 2018

[meninblue]

Shami has turned the match around with three wickets.

Mike, as I said few days back, Bhuvi and Shami are top two pacers in India.


3 wickets for him. Big ones. ABD and Elgar had played lot of balls and had got into a threatening partnership. Those two were big knocks for Saffers by Shami. Quintins wicket was also very quickly taken by him.Could be match changing spell if we restrict them below 250.

[meninblue]

Imo 250 is what we should restrict them too. Anything over that is tough to chase. The ball was shooting at times yesterday. Jasprit got both wickets on shooters . If it shoots at the pace at which Rabada and Morkel bowls , then our batters will also be prone to LBW.

I still have SA as favorites, they are not far from 250 which imo will be tough to chase on wicket which is giving variable bounce or lack of it.

[meninblue]

Dinesh Karthik will fly to SA as replacement of Saha. Another poor wicket keeper getting in playing 11 because he can bat slightly better.

[Dr Cricket]

TBH outside Saha india haven't really got any good safe keepers in Ranji trophy though.
Saha injury is very annoying though.

[Dr Cricket]

personally would have gone for either Rishabh pant or Sanju samson, would prefer if they picked a kid to be a deputy behind Kl rahul for the 3rd test rather going for a pakistan technique of recycling old has beens Dinesh karthik.

Not sure Dinesh Karthik should be a keeper.

found a funny tweet earlier 2 years before Dhoni debut parthiv patel and Dinesh karthik were battling to be india wicket keeper and after dhoni retirement they still fighting to be the number 1 keeper lol.

would have preferred a younger keeper as a deputy or anyone not Dinesh karthik.

[Dr Cricket]

Wicket keepers is in a poor state in india at the moment as well, outside Saha no one can actually keep, they all really batsman that keep.
india really need to invest in keepers now considering Saha is already 33 and his quite injury prone as well.

I really can't think of any genuine option outside saha as well, which is why if they went with pant or Samson here as a deputy they could work on their keeping as well and they maybe have the motivation of working on the keeping rather than concentrating everything on the bat.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Game swings to India, bigly.

Though I presume the ball is doing something with this collapse. Note the variable bounce mentioned above.

[yuppie]

India need Ashwin to go through the SA tail now.

[Dr Cricket]

india need a wicket here though most people have 250 the 50-50 score here with 300 being 75-25 in SA favor.
SA very close to 250 now so india need a wicket here.
lucky for them is if they get 1 they should be able to get the next 4 quickly.

[Dr Cricket]

India need Ashwin to go through the SA tail now.

Ashwin been poor in this innings.
Sometimes Ashwin reminds me of Shami, they can go missing and not really bowl that well for a long period of the time.
Ashwin bowling far too straight and being far too defensive here.
hasn't got Jadeja either at the other end, Ashwin does like another spinner bowling in tandem with him.

if only Jadeja was able to improve his batting, india would have in all purpose played 2 spinners here with jadeja basically being kallis here with him getting in the team as a front line batsman that can bowl overs, sadly jadeja batting is so crap that he couldn't actually bat in the top 6.

[yuppie]

These 2 seem happy to bat time as well. 45 run partnership, possibly putting SA ahead at present.

[Dr Cricket]

not really sure what SA are doing here at the momemt.
they should be trying to score quick runs.

[yuppie]

not really sure what SA are doing here at the momemt.
they should be trying to score quick runs.

Plenty of time left, just letting the pitch get as old as possible i think.

New ball in 8 overs. India could wrap up the tail quickly with that. Perhaps SA want to make sure they are bowling with the new ball as alate as possible, and to give their bowlers a fresh start tomorrow morning as well.

[Dr Cricket]

TBH they could be scoring more than 1 or 2 runs an over though.
the way they batting they might not even get around 250 when the new ball arrives.
they *modded* if the new ball finishes them off considering they would have wasted a session and still not take the game ahead.

this tactic only works if they going for the draw which would be odd considering they are in the driving seat.
they actually making it easier for india to get the draw if they choose to go for it.

[Dr Cricket]

odd policy as well considering if SA are all out now they wouldn't really have enough runs if the deck is still good for batting.
you can understand this policy if SA were so ahead of india in terms of runs as well.
not saying they should be slogging and going at 5 or 6 runs an over but going at 1 and allowing the indian to bowl maidens is stupid considering the indians are just waiting for the new ball now.