Hope the remaining matches are better than this.
India vs South Africa
- Thread starter Insanity
- Start date
Hope the remaining matches are better than this.
Usually love low-scoring games but this is unusually low given the quality of batting on paper. Was it a really poor pitch, or did the batsmen just fail to cope with the spin?
A combination of both I would say: not a very good test pitch combined with batsmen not having the ability to play decent spin bowling on a track that was turning. Both teams made a struggle of scoring 200 runs; it wasn't a minefield.
Still a good win for India. Good to get that early win in a series.
SA needs to rethink their combination. They can't go in on these pitches with only 5 batsmen, 3 of whom have never played a test match in India before. Need to go with 6 batters, WK batsman, 2 spinners & 2 pacers. Duminy and Elgar can easily fulfill role of the 3rd spinner/5th bowler on these kinda pitches.
Didn't see the first two days but I don't get the moaning about the pitch if today was anything to go by. It was spinning more than it normally would (which I loved!) but other than absolutely nothing wrong with the pitch. There wasn't even any huge variable bounce that I could make out.
In fact, I thought it was an excellent pitch overall. The low scores I'd say were a combination of some good spin bowling, lack of depth in batting from both teams (both teams only played 6 batsmen), lack of experience from South Africa and some poor shots (wtf Amla).
In fact, I thought it was an excellent pitch overall. The low scores I'd say were a combination of some good spin bowling, lack of depth in batting from both teams (both teams only played 6 batsmen), lack of experience from South Africa and some poor shots (wtf Amla).
Amla and Kohli both saying that it wasn't a bad pitch but was a bad performance by batsmen.
In the next match I'd drop Saha and Dhawan and bring in Rohit and Ojha.
In the next match I'd drop Saha and Dhawan and bring in Rohit and Ojha.
I'd have Rahul for Dhawan.
Rohit would've come in for Mishra if not for the AB wickets
Saha's wicketkeeping hasn't impressed me.
I thought we definitely got lucky with Duminy's injury.
Ishant Sharma will be back from suspension, he could play as well.
SA will have only themselves to blame for the loss, particularly the top order batting. The pitch, given it was assisting spinners from 1st day wasn't the best pitch to have in test but that was not the reason SA lost. The players who failed were supposed to be better players of spin. It will be interesting to see how they do in rest of the matches. 8 of their 11 players were playing in India first time so they have lot to learn.
Any good odds for Ashwin taking ten wickets in an innings here?
Just noticed that Stuart fecking Binny is playing today.
Yeah. Add this to the woman he's marries to and you have to wonder about the luck on this guy
Rubbish batting by Saffers. Apart from the Duminy and Amla dismissal, none of the other wickets were bowler induced. We've certainly bowled well but not 177/7 well.
Credit to the team for doing well despite having Virat Kohli as captain
All in their heads. This pitch isn't a square turning pitch either.
Yup. This is a pretty normal pitch.
Another case of terrible batting it seems from the comments. I hate (not quite hate) test matches that don't go the distance on the 5th day.
Tbf, tests ending in 4 days can be a lot of fun too, as long as there is a good contest between bat and ball. This is just poor batting though.
Saffers have looked clueless against slower/spin bowling. Many of them are playing here first time but likes of Amla and Faf (even if it is his first time in tests here) should really be doing lot better.
Don't remind me of her
We will see about that in the future but at the moment he is getting away with absolutely senseless and ridiculous decisions because the team is winning.
What decisions? List them?
In the first test he for some reason decided that the fast bowlers had to bowl spells even though there was nothing in the wicket for them, on the second morning he allowed South Africa to get more than 50 runs till Ashwin was introduced into the attack because again he wanted to bowl Aaron and Umesh. In fact on that pitch we shouldn't have played 2 fast bowlers anyway specially when they are Umesh and Aaron. Then in this match I think Binny can score a 100 here but it will still not justify playing a nothing cricketer over specialists,then I am still trying to understand why we bowled first today.
Binny is primarily in the team who can bat and brings some strength to our batting lineup since we looked vulnerable in the first test. I suspect if Saha was any good with the bat then we wouldn't have made this decision but we've to play with what we've got.
We bowled first because it had been raining in the last two three days in Bangalore which meant there was moisture and dampness in the pitch which meant there was swing for pacebowlers and nice grip and bounce for Spinners.
In the first match with Ashwin coming back from an injury, he gave the bowl to pace bowlers to give spinners some respite. Yes that can be seen as a mistake but it was a conservative decision rather than senseless and stupid one.
Poor AB is having a Sachin-esque experience of away tours circa late 90s early 00s.
No play on day 2 because of rain. Bah. Just when I had a free day to lazily lounge in front of the TV too.
Actually wanted to head to the stadium but then again, don't even want to head out of the house with this weather.
Intermittent rains forecasted for tomorrow as well.
Yesterday was seemingly an exception. It's virtually been raining non stop for a week now in Bangalore. Wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't much cricket in the next few days... Ugh. I hate Bangalore.
Rained through the night again, I've serious doubts we'll have much play today.
feck off Bangalore.
India all out for 215.
SA to bat 7-8 overs today.
SA to bat 7-8 overs today.
Now this pitch is a dustbowl.
This is ridiculous cricket. I'm totally for pitches assisting a bit more for the bowlers but this is taking it a bit too far.
Pitches these days are either flat track roads or mines. England are producing green tops, swing yourself to victory inside 3 days. India are producing spinning tracks, some Harmer rookie taking four wickets on the first day of a test, scores are barely going past 200. Pakistan are producing flat tracks, no help for bowlers just hope that the opposition crumble under scoreboard pressure. Australia the same, just on quicker pitches and rapid outfields. Then you've got SL and WI where it rains half the time anyway so it doesn't matter what you produce.
Don't know if it's down to lack of experience/technique or the pitches favoring the home side too much but anyway it's killing cricket. Test teams just don't travel well these days.
Pitches these days are either flat track roads or mines. England are producing green tops, swing yourself to victory inside 3 days. India are producing spinning tracks, some Harmer rookie taking four wickets on the first day of a test, scores are barely going past 200. Pakistan are producing flat tracks, no help for bowlers just hope that the opposition crumble under scoreboard pressure. Australia the same, just on quicker pitches and rapid outfields. Then you've got SL and WI where it rains half the time anyway so it doesn't matter what you produce.
Don't know if it's down to lack of experience/technique or the pitches favoring the home side too much but anyway it's killing cricket. Test teams just don't travel well these days.
I'm going to be biased as I'm an Indian fan.
Since 2011, having drawn away to South Africa, India have lost every away test series in conditions favouring seam and swing bowlers. Even during that SA series, we played on some green tops in Durban and Cape Town (not as bad). This was followed by seamer friendly wickets in England, Australia, SA, NZ, England and Australia. Although not all the wickets were bowler friendly, they favoured mostly seam bowlers and India were given a bashing whether it be Trent Bridge, Auckland, Lords, Durban or Sydney. During this time, wickets in India went from flat to flatter and then India took some action. After that absymal showing against England, at home, India have "manufactured" wickets that favour their bowling, and righfully so.
We've toured SA in 2006, 2011 and 2013, and in every series we have played on green tops favouring mostly seam and swing bowlers. Luckily for us, we had Zaheer, Sreesanth, Ishant and Harbhajan amongst an amazing set of batsmen to win us a test match in both series, and be so close to a series victory in 2011. During that same period, we played SA at home in 2008 and 2010 - where Sehwag scored a 300, Amla and De Villiers scored 200s, Tendulkar, Laxman, Ganguly, Dhoni, Smith, Mckenzie were all amongst the big scorers in either '08 or '10. For too long have wickets been flat in India, and it's about time we gave back some of the medicine we've been forcefully taking over the last few years. We were going down a terrible slope after the World Cup, and we needed some help to get back up. It just so happened to be that producing wickets that favoured spin bowling was one of the ways to get ourselves up. The Likes of Tendulkar, Laxman, Dravid, Rahane, Kohli and Gambhir played some exceptional innings' over the last 4 or 5 years to either save or win us test matches against very good fast bowling on in tough conditions, I don't see why the likes of Amla, Faf and AB can't do so here.
Ponting suggested that the home team can produce any kind of pitches but the visiting captain will decide who'll bat first thus negating the home advantage by a bit.
That would be interesting. Cricket is a complex game with many factors but I still find it laughable at times that a result is often most influenced by a toss of a coin. It's a little bit ridiculous.
Wasn't having a dig at India in particular. They are well within their rights to do that as hosts. Just saying that test cricket is heading in the wrong direction with home advantage playing too big of a role. All test nations are guilty of it. Pakistan just beat England comfortably 2-0 but I know for certain that England will win 4-0 or 3-1 when the teams meet again in July, with most matches done within 4 days. Test cricket is getting boring and predictable.
Truncated test series are also to blame imo. There are fewer warm-up matches for visiting sides to acclimatise to the conditions so they generally get off to a bad start and then don't have enough Tests left to turn the series around.
This would help, but it's nowhere close to being enough if pitches continue to be doctored as they are.