Chittagong – South Africa and Bangladesh players who have been forced to leave the field early on the preceding days of this first Test due to overcast conditions and showers, awoke this morning to even darker clouds and heavier rains and the likelihood of no play until only the second session of the fourth day in Chittagong.
This situation would leave both teams hugely frustrated as the Test remains delicately poised after Bangladesh claimed their biggest ever first innings lead in Test cricket yesterday – 78 runs – only to watch South Africa’s new opening pair of Stiaan van Zyl and Dean Elgar negotiate 21.1 overs to bring the visitors within 17 runs of reaching parity.
Both left-handers looked increasingly comfortable at the crease, with Elgar especially finding an efficient balance between attack and defence against the spinners as he was not afraid to use his feet to get to the pitch of the ball. Van Zyl also seems to be growing into his new position with every innings, although he did have an element of good fortune when Mohammad Shahid found his outside edge with an away-swinger, only to watch the ball agonisingly drift between wicket-keeper Litton Das and first slip.
Traditionally in the subcontinent, the final two days of the Test move much quicker than the first three due to the surface deteriorating rapidly, but with all the rain that has fallen creating moisture below the covers, the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury pitch could actually not follow its natural course.
"I don't think the cracks will get a lot worse with the amount of rain that's been around. We played through a lot of rain today (yesterday) as well. I don't see the cracks being a factor," South Africa's off-spinner Simon Harmer said before praising his teammates batting effort. "Dean (Elgar) and Stiaan (Van Zyl) did a good job to go unscathed in that last session especially with the bad light and the rain around."
Litton Das, who scored a maiden Test half-century yesterday to help Bangladesh create more history by posting over 300 for the first time against the Proteas, however believed that his team still had their noses in front and that the home side could still exploit whatever little bit of assistance there was for the bowlers.
"The advantage is that they still couldn't surpass our lead so if we bowl in planned way, we could dominate them," Litton Das said. "It could have been good if we had taken few wickets. That didn't happen but still we are ahead of them. The wicket is tough to bat on. We have to bowl wicket to wicket because there is assistance for the bowlers."
Unfortunately both camps will have to wait until the weather improves drastically before either one can even start strategising on how to achieve a result here.
A match that promised so much looks likely to be decided on matters beyond anyone’s control, and considering Bangladesh’s history against South Africa in Test cricket, and the fact that the visitors are the World’s No 1 ranked team in the longest format, a stalemate would be heralded as a major morale victory in these parts.