Shamik Chakrabarty at Eden Gardens
The breakthrough eventually came in the 13th over of the day. Jasprit Bumrah from the High Court end castled Corbin Bosch with the one that skidded off the surface and kept low. It was only Bumrah’s third over of the day. Did stand-in captain Rishabh Pant miss a trick by not starting the proceedings with the team’s best bowler from one end?
It was fine to give Ravindra Jadeja the Club House end. The left-arm spinner was spitting venom on his way to taking four wickets yesterday from that end. But Bumrah should have been bowling from the other side. By the time he came into the attack and broke a 44-run eighth wicket partnership, the Proteas had moved to 135. They were all out for 153 in their second innings. Time will tell if the partnership between Temba Bavuma and Bosch was the game-changer. A victory target of 124 is pretty steep on this surface. Only once has a team successfully chased down a 100-plus target in the fourth innings at Eden Gardens, India doing it against South Africa in 2004.
Maybe, it was due to the roller effect, but the pitch looked to have settled down a bit on the third morning. Still, Bavuma’s 55 not out, scored in 183 minutes and 136 balls, was a superlative effort. The South Africa captain was grit and application personified. Scoring runs on this pitch always needed some slices of luck. Fortune favours the brave. More importantly, his approach served as a blueprint for how to bat on such a treacherous surface.
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