India beaten at their own game in Centurion
This will hurt, this will sting, and this will erode the façade encapsulating this Indian team. The margin of defeat paints a story, yes, but stats can only shed so much light; the entire tale is replete with stumbles, stutters, trips, blunders, sprinkled with fleeting moments of a fight.
Make no mistake, the fight was fleeting, make no mistake, this loss will take a long time to sink in.
Cape Town was everything South Africa salivate at. Centurion was more like Chepauk, South Africa frowned, Kohli too was expecting a bit more grass on the surface, perhaps disappointed, but when the euphoria subsides, and if one is honest, he will be the first one to concede that this was their opportunity to salvage a win, and they tripped. Yes, this loss will hurt!
“We thought the wicket was really flat. It was surprising. We thought we have our best chance to put runs on the board. Especially after the way SA ended the first innings, we had the momentum. We should have got the lead. It's the batsmen who have let the team down again,” Kohli said after the match.
For all his bravado and panache, the Indian captain is an honest man. His assumptions might be pointed, but seldom are they over the top.
Here was a man who was hurt, a proud captain who had just lost his first series as a leader. His ego had taken a battering, yes, this loss will hurt.
Winning is great, there are no debates over that, but the secret to continuity is to make sure the losses are not staring you in the face while you are fumbling for answers. Defeats are every bit part of the process, and yet this defeat will hurt.
When Faf du Plessis won the toss on a brown surface and elected to bat, Kohli had made it clear that it would require a lot of effort to get 20 wickets on the pitch and yet his bowlers, those very beings who are always thrown to the dogs after every overseas forfeiture, scalped South Africa twice.
And then the vaunted batting line-up stepped up, tripped, and fell away on a surface which was screaming out to be their aide.
Along the way, the captain, still smarting from his miseries in Cape Town, decided to show the way, and he did it with some intent, but at the other end, his colleagues wilted away. The pitch looked the other way, it was nowhere in the picture.
Ahh, and then Cheteshwar Pujara ran himself out, and Hardik Pandya, so consumed by his confidence, forgot to ground his bat!
All this came after the fast bowlers extracted reverse swing and Ravichandran Ashwin bowled 31 overs on day 1 to pick four wickets in the first innings. You would have been pardoned for thinking this match was taking place in India!
Except it wasn’t. Kohli kept cruising along, his partners kept deserting him, almost forcing him to look for quick runs, resulting in him getting himself out for 153.
It was an epic, everything people have come to expect of Kohli, and yet as the batting wilted all over again on day 5, it meant nothing.
“150 means nothing now that we've lost the series. Having not won the game, personal milestones do not matter at all,” Kohli said, and you could almost feel the palpable pain.
28 runs were the difference between the two sides after the first dig. Jasprit Bumrah even managed to skittle a few, pinning Aiden Markram and Hashim Amla in front of the stumps. 3 runs, 2 wickets, effective lead 31, Kohli was buzzing, India were floating.
Ashwin took the ball on a weary surface. The footmarks were getting darker on the pitch and he had Dean Elgar in front of him; well, Elgar was dismissed by Ashwin five times before this innings and he wielded his bat like an amateur, sticking it out more in hope than any conviction.
The ball bounced, it turned, it befuddled Elgar but it did not dismantle him. Elgar kept prodding, he kept praying, India kept chirping. No one blinked, and amidst all the frenzy, he survived.
AB de Villiers was at the other end, he was bamboozled too, not because of the surface, not because of Ashwin, but because of the struggle Elgar was going through. He took one step forward to Bumrah and creamed him through covers, then took a step back, used the depth of the crease and whacked Ashwin through point.
Before India could blink, he had motored along to 40, and the lead had swelled past 100. Highveld, which was sweltering under intense heat for the past two days, encountered torrential rains.
Kohli was not too impressed when the umpires dragged them back on the field; the outfield was damp, the ball rolled over it, Ashwin could not grip it, the faster men could not get it to reverse. Bumrah did not know this though. He got one to rear up at Elgar, who gloved it and sent it flying to the left of Parthiv Patel and right of Pujara. No one moved, the ball screamed to the boundary.
Kohli was was livid, so much so, that when the umpires called off the day’s play, he zipped to the match referee and voiced his agitation.
And then day four rolled in, the sun was back in all its glory, the match was poised for the moving day, and this is when India should have gone for the kill; this was exactly when India let it meander though. They let it all go and they never came back, ever again.
The first hour of the first session was dominated by de Villiers and grafted out by Elgar. Mohammed Shami came into the attack and got rid of both in the second hour. India were buoyant once again as they headed back.
201 runs for 5 wickets. South Africa were not yet comfortable. India should have known this, but old habits die hard.
The hosts decided to opt for attritional cricket, they wanted to drag the visitors, bake them under the sun and bat them out of the Test. They feared Virat Kohli, the chaser.
However, it was India who flummoxed everyone. Shami, the man who had picked all the three wickets in the first session, bowled just one over, while Pandya kept running in and dishing up fast off-cutters. The game dragged on, the runs were not flowing, but they were trickling in. Slowly, India were pushed out of the contest and yet they did not realise it. It was baffling, it was strange and it was here that the visitors threw in the towel, or in more adept terms, it was here that the hosts snatched the towel.
57 for two in the middle session. Kohli, much like Dhoni, did not go for the kill, did not take the new ball, did not bowl Shami, and watched the match drift away!
251 was the highest target chased down at Centurion; India allowed South Africa to reach 286. Kohli pumped his fists when the final Protea wicket fell. Was it all this good or was it just his bravado making a false appearance again?
When Murali Vijay was dismissed by Kagiso Rabada, the proverbial writing on the wall was slowly unveiling. The ball was a grubber; Vijay could not do anything with it except drag it onto his wickets.
KL Rahul suffered a brain fade - the word is hip today - as he cut one straight to point. Kohli walked in, Centurion was up in arms, and he started leaving balls. But much like in Cape Town, Lungi Ngidi, the debutant, got one to nip back in and pinned the captain right in front of the stumps.
Three wickets down, plenty to get on day 5, Pujara ran himself out again, on a surface which was right up his alley, and walked back to the hut. Parthiv Patel, who had been living an extended nightmare, brought out a couple of sumptuous drives before hooking one to Morne Morkel at deep fine leg.
The pitch was tough, yes, but these strokes were nothing more than suicidal. Told you, this loss will hurt more!
Five wickets came and went, few strokes in the middle provided a meek reminder of what could have been had batsmen applied themselves, however, they also reminded us of why this loss was nothing like Cape Town.
This pitch was more Indian than South African and India had been beaten in their own game. Character was at stake after Newlands, and it now remains shred and shattered.
All the theories about pain being pivotal to building character were now cast away into the shadows. This failure, this pain will sting this Indian team, the number one side in the world, for a long long time.
“We tried our best and we just weren't good enough,” Kohli added.
Perhaps this might be true, perhaps this is just taking a refuge. Were India good? What if they had encountered the same pitch against the same side in India?
Let’s just leave it at that!