South Africa vs India 2018: From Pujara's runouts to Parthiv's keeping, things that went wrong for India in the second Test
After losing the first Test, it is always difficult for a team to make a comeback in a short three-Test series. The story repeated itself as India lost a golden opportunity on a “favourable” Centurion wicket and were thumped in the second Test by a huge 135 run margin.
Right from when the first ball was bowled, everyone in the cricketing fraternity felt the nature of the wicket was suited for subcontinental teams. However, despite the favouring conditions, the visitors fell to a humiliating defeat in the end.
So, let’s look at what went wrong for Kohli’s men.
#1 Batting failed miserably
After the first day, when Ashwin bowled more than 30 overs, one expected the Indian batsmen to score runs on a wicket that looked more like that of Chepauk than of Centurion.
While South Africa had five half-centuries in the match, Indian batting had only one hero in captain Virat Kohli, who scored a majestic 153 in the first innings. The next best score for India in the whole Test was 47 by Rohit Sharma which came at the end when the writing was on the wall.
There were too many soft dismissals and it was a case of batsmen not applying themselves on a wicket which needed patience to score runs. Classic examples were the wickets of KL Rahul and Hardik Pandya in the second innings. The former played a casual cut shot in the air off a nothing delivery only to be caught at point while the latter was caught behind while trying to play the ramp shot off one of the poorest deliveries in the match.
Both threw their wickets away when the need of the hour was to grind out the overs.