South Africa v India tests - Jan 2018

[Dr Cricket]

Pandya takes a wicket now.
Wickets is a belter for batting now.
Rabada for a Nightwatchman.

[Dr Cricket]

Great end to a good day for SA, Steyn's injury apart. Another fifty runs and the negative thoughts will creep in for India.

Have to wonder if the lack of match practice isn't a factor in India's performance. If you don't go with the orthodox, it tends not to look good if events don't go your way.

TBH not sure Kohli is quite negative same with shastri.
If anything both of them are quite positive and optimistic like I am.
Doubt any of them are pesstimistic like adi is.

[Dr Cricket]

Think Kohli and shastri will genuinely think India can chase anything below 350 so I doubt India heads will go down till sa get another 200 odd runs still.
Not sure I seen Kohli ever give up on a win either.

[Dr Cricket]

What day pandya is having 2 wicket now, Elgar gone.
Boom 2 wickets is a bonus with the flatter conditions now.

[meninblue]

Great end to a good day for SA, Steyn's injury apart. Another fifty runs and the negative thoughts will creep in for India.

Have to wonder if the lack of match practice isn't a factor in India's performance. If you don't go with the orthodox, it tends not to look good if events don't go your way.

Ignoring match practice was a rubbish decision. We had played T20 series with SL and ODI series before that. The wickets too were totally different apart form the one we had in ODI where we struggled at 28/6 only to reach 117 . The mindset or shot selection needs to be adjusted.It was a format change. All of this apart from Chet were playing in the shorter format. They could have used it to adapt. We would still have flopped getting out at 209 after playing that warmup, however the approach, the importance and the adjustment may have helped as well. What is a net session going to do. No fielders, no keeper. And the bowlers and captain will also get a idea about field placement better.

[mikesiva]

Elgar out for 25. All opening batsmen have struggled this match so far.

[meninblue]

Hardik Strikes. 2 for him. What a test he is having. 136 runs lead with 8 wickets to take.

Elgar like almost every other batsman this test was troubled and finally Hardik converted it into a wicket.

We need few more. Saffers still favorites to win this. It's not a easy wicket to bat on.

[meninblue]

Nice to see Virat still attacking even though we are trailing by 136 runs.

[Dr Cricket]

TBH it wasn’t just nets, I believe they intersquad games as well.
Basically batsman vs bowlers.
Really they did it so they can play on a quick deck and not play a game on a slow deck with *modded* players.

[meninblue]

Stumps day 2 and Saffers effectively 142/2 which is a very good position on this wicket. Massive favorites imo to win this. Been a very good test match though to watch. Saffers have outplayed us in batting and bowling department.

[Dr Cricket]

Still a long way to go adi.

[Dr Cricket]

Reckon Ashwin still got a part to play here.
With India long batting line up, reckon sa would need around 350 to feel confident wouldn’t say they are massive fav with philander at 7 and steyn injured.
Sa got a good advantage but not massive fav though.

[GGAS]

He may yet prove me wrong, but you have to wonder why India selected a medium pacer who's not played first class cricket for a year in the squad, never mind the first XI.

[meninblue]

This match, like Andy said yesterday, will get over in 4 days, unless the wicket becomes batsmen friendly. The trend of wicket easing and batsman looking better was not observed at all. Saffers will probably have more runs to defend in second inningsgiven the massive lead of 77 runs.

Faf has got away with the blunder of asking India to bowl first. I think that is the only mistake in captaincy he has done this test. Otherwise his bowling changes, his field placement were top class for those particular match situations. I liked his captaincy. We would have scored less had we batted first instead. Credit to Saffers when they batted in the conditions that prevailed then. ABD and Faf partnership was the game changer.Since then Saffers have dominated this test and hold significant advantage to win this by day 4 imo.

[Dr Cricket]

Think the batting got easier in the last 2 session today, suspect the batting will continue to get easier as well.
you rarely ever see seam move stay throughout a test match and it is far too early in the test for variable bounce to play a part either so generally we should see good batting conditions tomorrow and most of day 4 as well.