3rd Test, India tour of South Africa at Johannesburg, Jan 24-28 2018

Kohli’s fire and Pujara’s ice do the trick for India

Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara. Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli. Two more different persons, two more different batsmen will be hard to find. You sometimes wonder if they have any common interests that can help them get through the long days spent next to each other in the slips. And then they bat together. With completely different vocabularies and grammar. One man wants to refuse errors, the other wants to refuse to let the bowler settle. One man can wait out 53 balls on nought while not playing a loose shot to a decent ball, the other is usually near a hundred if he faces 53 dot balls in an innings.

They watch each other and must surely admire the qualities they don’t have themselves. Surely Kohli watches Pujara and admires the discipline with which he figures out what line he has to play and what line he can leave? “He has lots of shots, and the way he batted today, I don’t think any other batsman could have batted like that,” Pujara said of Kohli after adding 84 for the third wicket with him on day one at the Wanderers, easily worth 150 on a normal pitch. This pitch had copious amounts of generous seam movement available.

“This is one of the toughest pitches I’ve played on,” Pujara said. “And as we saw, it was difficult to score some runs, especially in the first session. It was difficult to rotate the strike. It has a lot of bounce, it has seam movement. And there is enough pace now. So we had to work hard to score runs, but the total we have I think it is as good as scoring 300 on any wicket. As we saw, we got a wicket, and if we bowl well, I think we’ll get them out. I would say it was a good day for us.”

South Africa will be the first ones to concede they were not at their best with the ball and in the field, but the pitch was still really difficult. You needed to bowl really bad balls or bowl decent ones to really good attacking batsmen to be hit on this pitch. In Pujara and Kohli, South Africa found that combination. Pujara waited and waited and waited, and refused to risk making a mistake for a run until he finally got a ball too straight and too full. Kohli backed his eye, picking the length early, getting into attacking positions every ball, and defending or leaving as a second thought. Neither man was averse to doing what didn’t come naturally to him: when Pujara was in, he threw his bat at every loose ball; Kohli faced 86 dots out of 106.

Normally you would perhaps criticise the extreme defence of Pujara or – at moments – the reckless attack of Kohli. Here a defensive batsman needed to dig deep into his reserves of discipline, and an attacking batsman needed to capitalise on every small opportunity before one with his name arrived. You need luck to survive on such a pitch, and they both had it.

Too late from the point of view of winning the series, the return to this balance of defence and attack was a step closer to the template that served India’s batting well on their previous overseas cycle. For some reason that balance has gone wonky this time around. While Kohli has maintained his attacking instincts, M Vijay is playing too many shots and half-heartedly so, Pujara until this innings was not sure what game to play, and the batsmen after Kohli have no idea what their game should be because they have no security in the side.

Pujara and Kohli did their best to vindicate the bold call to bat first on a spicy pitch. “I think as the game progresses, we are very sure that this wicket will be difficult to bat on,” Pujara said. “As we saw even in the later stages of today, the cracks are opening up and a couple of balls deviated a lot. I mean, I haven’t seen deviation like that before. As the game progresses I think this wicket will have variable bounce and cracks will open up, so it will be difficult to bat on. That’s the reason we chose to bat first.”

However, not every bowling innings from South Africa will feature balls too wide or too short, not every day will they have AB de Villiers dropping a catch. The platform set by Pujara and Kohli was a great opportunity for India to post a formidable total. They should be extremely disappointed with the shots played in the lower-middle order and the lower order. They won’t be now but they should be asking themselves if they needed five seamers and to lose the cushion of a sixth batsman. What they have now is competitive but will ask for a repeat of this kind of extreme discipline and attacking skill in the second innings too.

Before that, India will need their bowlers to make sure South Africa don’t get ahead on the first innings. “I think we’ll be looking to get them out before 150,” Pujara said. “And, obviously, looking at this total, I think the second innings will be very important. Seeing the weather forecast, I think it will be overcast and there will be more help for the fast bowlers.”

Why Indian Cricketers go in Africa for Cricket or Honeymoon

Why Indian Cricketers go in Africa for Cricket or Honeymoon

De Villiers, du Plessis fifties give South Africa 286

Drama, thy name is Test cricket. At Newlands. On a pitch with a bit of spice. With a build-up that did not lack for shots across the bow.

Faf du Plessis confessed he had a score to settle, and so he armed himself with four fast bowlers the envy of the world. Virat Kohli saw Dale Steyn, Kagiso Rabada, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander during warm-ups. His only comment with regard to was "we knew they were going a batsman short and we want to get at them with the new ball". He should feel happy enough knocking South Africa out for 286.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar spirited three wickets in his first three overs. To ensure there wasn't one-way traffic, AB de Villiers produced a half-century that was downright delectable. He had total control of the game and the opposition at his mercy when the debutant Jasprit Bumrah - who played his last first-class game almost a year ago - knocked back the off stump.

India's hold-one-end-up bowler Hardik Pandya got rid of du Plessis for 62 mere moments after a remarkably tight lbw call went against the visitors. Kohli probably had that running in his head - and the South African captain's pre-series comments about revenge - when he indulged in a send-off and was soon cautioned by the umpires.

Worried that things had calmed too far down, Quinton de Kock spent an hour in the middle looking like he was the action hero who always gets shot at but never gets hit. Anyone who stepped away from their screens during play in Cape Town, please report to the cricket gods for punishment.

Now, it is more than fair for a home team to play to its strengths but that didn't mean batting was a treacherous exercise. The outfield was lightning. The ball came onto the bat even better than expected. Fields were up. And fun was had. The run-rate through the first two sessions was 4.3

Dean Elgar might not be too happy with how his day went though. Having finished 2017 as South Africa's highest Test scorer, his first innings in the new year lasted only three deliveries. It wasn't entirely his fault though. India had probably done their homework and realised that of his 44 dismissals to pace, 30 of them have been caught behind or in the cordon. So Bhuvneshwar forced him to deal with a back of a length ball pitching on off stump and seaming away. He had to play. Then he had to go.

Aiden Markram was lbw not playing a shot. Okay, that's not quite true. He was trying desperately to bring his bat in line with a good length delivery pitching outside off and jagging back in but he just wasn't quick enough. The young opener basically strung himself up with his habit of shuffling across and playing around his front pad.

The third wicket of this phenomenal spell was probably the most important of them all. But it was the least sexy. Hashim Amla poked well away from his body and Wriddhiman Saha picked up his second catch of the first half hour, much to the cacophonous delight of the slip fielders beside him. Oddly, Ajinkya Rahane was not among that number with India choosing to go in with Rohit Sharma, a man in better recent form.

With the new ball and the outside and inside edges hogging the limelight, the middle of the bat was off sulking somewhere. De Villiers found it and made sure it was front and centre for the entire time he was at the crease. He sent his first delivery through midwicket for a crisp boundary. He struck India's best bowler Bhuvneshwar for four fours in an over. He played late. He met the ball close to his body. He used soft hands. And he punished anything even remotely short. In essence, de Villiers' innings was an exhibition of how to bat on a difficult pitch. Playing only his third day of Test cricket over the last two years, he made 65 off 84 balls.

Du Plessis was, as ever, scoring runs by simply making sure he was at the wicket. He waited for the wide ones to hit through cover and point. He feasted on the straight ones, that strong bottom hand coupling very nicely with a fast outfield. But the cut shot to get to a half-century in his comeback Test - he missed Boxing Day with a viral infection - was basically a dare. Try stopping that.

India might have done even better if Mohammed Shami had found his rhythm sooner but he did not enjoy bowling into the wind; his run-up noticeably affected. It took 10 overs and three spells for his first wicket of the tour. It was one his team was hunting for though. Philander, in his pre-match comments, had indicated that he did not believe India were better travellers now. And while he did play some of the best cover drives in the match, helping string a vital 60-run stand for the sixth wicket at more than run-a-ball, he left the field with his defences and his stumps shattered.

Bhuvneshwar had the opportunity to take a fifth wicket just before tea was taken, but India's old problem of having a porous slip cordon put paid to those plans when Shikhar Dhawan dropped Keshav Maharaj on 0. The batsman had made 35 in enterprising fashion before he was dismissed, run-out by a direct hit from R Ashwin at mid-on. Later, the offspinner picked up his first wicket in South Africa, Rabada caught behind. The innings ended in the 74th over when Morkel was lbw for 2. The hosts' last five wickets added 144 runs - that's two more than the first five.