(Cricket News) Despite two late wickets, Dean Elgar’s century at his home ground of Centurion set the stage for South Africa’s dominant show at the bat on Wednesday. The hosts took an 11-run lead over India with only five wickets lost on a second consecutive day that was cut short by bad weather, with Day 2 ending with bad light for India.
KL Rahul started the day fairly positively, scoring valuable runs with the last two batsmen en route to his century before being cleaned up by Nandre Burger, giving the pacer his third wicket of the innings on debut. Rahul’s innings helped the visitors to a respectable 245 on a difficult surface.
Elgar and Tony de Zorzi put up a strong show in the morning session helping the hosts to Lunch at 49 for 1. India made early inroads with Mohammed Siraj having Aiden Markram caught behind on 5. India’s new ball pair Jasprit Bumrah and Siraj bowled in tight channels with some help from the conditions, but could not cause further damage.
It helped that the surface had flattened out a bit by then and lacked the bite that had troubled the batters for most of the match till then; it helped that Shardul Thakur and Prasidh Krishna, the change bowlers, were not as disciplined with their lines and lengths. Elgar broke free soon after the lunch break, quite unlike his conventional style of play, driving and pulling when the opportunities presented themselves.
After Zorzi and Elgar put on 93 runs for the second wicket, Jasprit Bumrah, back for his second spell, had Zorzi outside-edge to slips and Keegan Petersen inside-edge a ball on to his stumps in quick succession, bringing the hosts down to 113 for 3.
Elgar and David Bedingham took a while to get going, but they had opportunities to score quickly as the ball got older and softer and the Indian pacers were finding it difficult to keep tight channels.
Elgar also took his chances and reached his 14th Test ton with a pull off Shardul for a boundary. It was his fourth fastest Test ton. Both
Both players took on the short balls, an attempt that failed for India.
The duo maintained the scoring rate and brought up their century stand soon after the Tea break, extending it to 131 runs before Bedingham was undone for pace by Siraj’s full delivery that knocked over his stumps.
Soon after, Prasidh made another breakthrough when he got Verreynne to cut the ball to the ‘keeper. The decision was overturned on review, even though the on-field umpire had declared it not out.
The debutant had been troublesome for the South African batsmen late in the day with his lengths, but Elgar, who had been hit on his fingers, had managed to bat safely until play was stopped by bad light, and he went to Stumps unbeaten on 140 with Marco Jansen.
Brief scores: South Africa 265/3: Dean Elgar 140*, David Bedingham 56; Jasprit Bumrah 2-48, Mohammed Siraj 2-63. India 245: KL Rahul 101, Virat Kohli 38; Kagiso Rabada 5/59, Nandre Burger 3/50.
