Centurion — Proteas captain stood firm with a well played 52 on day four of the first Test on Wednesday, and will be hoping to get some support from Temba Bavuma and Quinton de Kock as they look to salvage the game on the final day.
IOL Sport’s Stuart Hess, at SuperSport Park in Centurion, recounts some of the day’s action.
BALL: A Bumrah special, from wide on the crease, he pitched the ball half a metre wide of off stump, and had it rip back, to smash the top of Van der Dussen’s off-stump. You could argue, the batter should have played, but he, like everyone watching, reckoned it had no right to come back that far. It genuinely defied the laws of physics
CATCH: Pant got a good dive into his right, to get rid of Petersen.
KOHLI: 2021 has been a rather crap year for Virat Kohli with the bat.Twice out in this Test throwing his bat at balls wide of off-stump. He scored 536 runs in 19 innings this year, with just four 50s at an average of 28.21. Thankfully 2022 is just a few days away
5 MINUTES: The amount of time it took India to choose a new ball before South Africa’s second innings had even started. It appeared that someone brought the wrong ball out (the bowling team chooses two balls before the start of the innings) and a group of Indian players including skipper Virat Kohli then made a big fuss, trying to pull a new (new) one out of the box.
FORECAST: Thunderstorms have been predicted for Thursday afternoon, but which may take a session out of the day.
KEEP WALKING: After three days of play, CSA’s new sponsors’s catch tune is starting to wear thin. Batters are not going to enjoy hearing that throughout the series. Time to move on Johnnie…
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