Virat Kohli and his boys deserve all accolades for their series victory against South Africa with a Test still to play.
There has been lot of talk about the turning pitches in the series, but one has to remember that the home team is bound to derive advantage in whichever way suits them best. Pitches in India have always suited the spinners and, sometimes, in trying to prepare a turning track the curators also don’t have an idea as to how much turn the pitch is going to provide. The curator lays the base for a dry, spinning track, but how it will unfold over the five days of the match, how much spin the bowlers will be able to extract is something beyond his control.
I am sure if a curator prepares a pitch for a series between India and a Subcontinent side like Pakistan or Sri Lanka, the dryness of the pitch will be less as those teams also have quality spinners. So one has to remember that when you come to India you will face turning pitches — the final Test is in Delhi and the South Africans can be assured they will be greeted with a similar surface. Also, I believe that playing spin is an art equal to playing fast bowling and good teams should learn to handle both or else the disparity of sides in home and away conditions will continue to increase as it has been the case in the last few years.
India also got into difficult situations during batting in this series so far, mainly due to some excellent fast bowling by the South African pacers, but the visitors allowed India to get back because they didn’t have quality spinners operating from both ends to drive home the advantage. This was the reason England succeeded in India few years ago — they had two very high quality spinners in Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar operating from both ends, which made life difficult for the Indian batsmen.
South Africa lack experience on these wickets. Most members of this side have never played on such dry tracks. In the past, they had the outstanding Kallis and Smith at the top who took so much pressure off the others. The inexperience of the current players showed in shot selection. Then the lack of form of Hashim Amla and Faf du Plessis also affected the Proteas in a big way. It was left to one person, AB de Villiers, but in a Test series a team cannot survive on just one batsman, however superior he may be.
The life of the South African batsmen was made even more difficult by the superb bowling of Ravichandran Ashwin. He has been on an improvement curve over the last year. He has matured and by letting the ball come out of his hand at various speeds has added a variety which is keeping the batsmen guessing. He was well supported by Jadeja and Mishra, and they formed a perfect trio that never let up on the South African batsmen.
— Gameplan
