South Africa vs India 2013: 5 talking points from the 1st ODI

Quinton de Kock took the attack to the Indian bowlers

When you lose the first match of a 3 match series, it is always hard to come back from there. Even more so, when the first match is lost as badly as India lost to South Africa in the first ODI of the series at the Bullring in Johannesburg. India, in the coming games, would want to show that they’re a better batting unit than the one that put up a sorry excuse for a batting display today. Here are 5 major talking points from the first ODI.

1. South Africa got off to the perfect start

South Africa’s achilles heel in recent ODIs has been the fact that their openers have not given them the starts for the power-packed middle-order to carry on from. Very often, the likes of JP Duminy, AB de Villiers and David Miller have been burdened with having to rescue the innings after a top-order collapse.

But, that was not the case today. Some ordinary bowling at the start, by Bhuvneshwar Kumar in particular, and very intelligent batting ensured that Hashim Amla and Quinton de Kock got South Africa off to just the kind of start they would have so craved for. The score read 152 when Amla was dismissed and that ensured that the middle order could come out and do what they do best.

2. India are still a poor death-bowling side

When you concede 135 off the last ten overs, 84 of them in the last five, you know that there is something going woefully wrong there. Mohit Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammad Shami got it all wrong at the death and were punished by Duminy and de Villiers. As much as the Indian bowlers were poor in executing their skills, credit also has to be given to the South African duo for the way they took advantage of some horrendous bowling to make sure that the platform laid by de Kock and Amla didn’t prove to be futile.