India primed to take out the first Test against South Africa but may need to do so without their skipper who left the field with a neck spasm<\/p>\n
Ravindra Jadeja’s four-wicket burst has set India on course for a victory inside three days after a frenetic 15-wicket bonanza in the low-scoring opening Test against South Africa.<\/p>\n
India were in the box seat after bundling out South Africa for 159 at Eden Gardens where inconsistent bounce has been a bane for the shot-makers from both sides.<\/p>\n
It was evident in India’s reply too as they managed 189 to be left with a lead well short of their own expectations.<\/p>\n
South Africa finished day two on 7-93 – only 63 runs ahead with three wickets in hand.<\/p>\n
Skipper Temba Bavuma led their fightback with 29 not out and with Corbin Bosch on one at the other end.<\/p>\n
India were one batter short in the first innings after skipper Shubman Gill retired hurt with a neck spasm, having made four.<\/p>\n
Bowling coach Morne Morkel was non-committal about Gill’s chances of batting in the second innings.<\/p>\n
“I think we first need to determine how he got the neck stiffness, maybe it’s just a bad night’s sleep,” he said, denying that it was the result of Gill’s all-format workload.<\/p>\n
Saturday Seeds: Ashes stars light up Shield round<\/p>\n
“Shubman is a very fit guy. He looks after himself very well. So it was just unfortunate that he woke up with a stiff neck.”<\/p>\n
Off-spinner Simon Harmer (4-30) dragged South Africa back into the contest after India had resumed on their overnight score of 1-37.<\/p>\n
Washington Sundar (29) hit Keshav Maharaj for a six but could not carry on and was caught at slip off Harmer’s bowling.<\/p>\n
Gill opened his account with a four but immediately walked off the field rubbing his neck.<\/p>\n
Returning from a foot injury that kept him out of the home series against West Indies, Rishabh Pant (27) had the South Africa players on their toes right after he walked in.<\/p>\n
Pant was surprised by a leaping Maharaj delivery, which he guided towards slip where Markram was too startled to react in time and take the catch.<\/p>\n
Pant rubbed salt into Maharaj’s wound by stepping out to the next ball and hitting it for a six over mid-off.<\/p>\n
The spinner found some solace when he had Rahul (39) caught at slip but Pant scored freely.<\/p>\n
Bosch brought relief to the South Africa camp when he dismissed Pant caught behind with a bouncer.<\/p>\n
Jadeja contributed 27 but lack of partnerships hurt India, who folded half an hour before the tea break.<\/p>\n
In doing so, the 36-year-old joined a select group of all-rounders to reach 4000 runs and take 300 wickets in tests, joining \u2014 India’s Kapil Dev, England’s Ian Botham and New Zealand’s Daniel Vettori.<\/p>\n
Jadeja returned to haunt South Africa with the ball after the Proteas came out to bat for the second time in the match.<\/p>\n
After Kuldeep Yadav got rid of Ryan Rickelton for 11, South Africa’s frontline batters surrendered to Jadeja’s (4-29) relentless left-arm spin.<\/p>\n
“We need to obviously try and get as many as we can and get past 100,” Harmer told reporters.<\/p>\n
“If we can get to 150, that would be incredible but it’s obviously quite difficult.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"India primed to take out the first Test against South Africa but may need to do so without…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85,83],"class_list":["post-286989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}