Day 2 has been a mixed bag one for India up until now, with their catching letting them down early on in the day, but then Hardik Pandya coming out with a sensational grab in the outfield to start South Africa’s late order collapse.
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The Indian batsmen then came roaring out, looking compact and solid, and seeming very assured with their technique this time round.
However, the Vijay-Rahul partnership couldn’t go on for long with Morkel picking up a brilliant return catch to send Rahul packing.
Pujara departed without troubling the scorers, running himself out during a time when India needed some stability in the middle.
Virat Kohli walked in, once again having to bail India out of trouble. The South African bowlers could sniff an opportunity and went all out, spitting venom and asking regular questions off Vijay and Kohli.
The duo saw off the initial pressure and then started scoring freely, with Kohli unleashing those beautiful cover-drives to put the pressure back onto the South Africans.
And just when you thought that they could play until the close of the days play, as none of the bowlers seemed threatening enough, Vijay ended up nicking off to Keshav Maharaj.
Maharaj was prodding along that off-stump line, and Vijay kept cutting him to backward point, hitting it straight to the fielder on multiple occasions, but hitting it from the middle of the bat at all stages.
However, one ball from Maharaj bounced a little more, and Vijay couldn’t keep the ball under control and ended up nicking it to QDK.
Check out the video:
Virat Kohli was furious with Vijay’s shot selection, as clearly the ball wasn’t short enough to cut. Also, Virat realised the importance of that particular phase of the match, and wanted Vijay to be a little more circumspect with his shot selection.
With 3 wickets down, India now face a daunting task with respect to coming close to the South African total of 335.
