The Indian bowling attack looked short on ideas in the first session, with none of the bowlers getting any lateral movement off the surface or in the air.
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Virat Kohli made the bold choice of leaving out Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, despite his superlative performance in the 1st Test.
Ishant Sharam, his replacement, couldn’t extract much with the ball in the 1st session and India looked a little flat, with their body language and with their ideas.
Markram and Elgar solidified South Africa’s position in the middle, striking the ball sweetly and not taking too many risks.
India had to be more pro-active in the 2nd session, and Ashwin’s guile and turn was suggestive of a Test match that could revolve around his performance.
And India’s wiley old man delivered, getting Elgar out early on in the second session.
Ashwin was getting under Elgar’s nose, prodding along that off stump line and asking a lot of questions off Elgar.
Elgar tried to do something different, charging down the track, but ended up hitting it straight to Vijay, who gobbled up the catch on the third attempt.
Check out the video:
One down! pic.twitter.com/iJ4vjSZ6pz
— anshul kothari (@slimshady_ansh) January 13, 2018
It was interesting to see that before the ball that Elgar was dismissed on, Vijay was on short leg, and was then moved to silly point, and ended up taking the catch right after he was moved to silly point.
South Africa are currently 148/2 with Markram having nicked off a few minutes ago.