PC- Debasis Sen
Marco Jansen produced one of the great individual performances on Indian soil to leave the hosts reeling on Day 3 of the Guwahati Test and place South Africa within touching distance of a historic series whitewash.Walking in with South Africa already holding a 1-0 lead, a drawn result would have been satisfactory for his team. Instead, Jansen turned the match into his personal highlight reel, first with a brutal 93 from just 91 balls that included seven towering sixes, then a hostile spell of short-pitched bowling that fetched career-best figures of 6-48.
India never recovered after Jansen ripped through the batting order with a barrage of back-of-length deliveries and outright bouncers. Dhruv Jurel, Rishabh Pant, Ravindra Jadeja, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Kuldeep Yadav and Jasprit Bumrah all fell to the tall left-arm bowler, most of them fending uncomfortably or gloving to the cordon.
Jansen’s 6-48 ranks as the third-best innings return by a South African fast bowler in India, bettered only by Lance Klusener’s famous 8-64 in Kolkata in 1996 and Dale Steyn’s 7-51 in Nagpur in 2010. It also eclipsed Steyn’s 5-23 from Ahmedabad in 2008. In doing so, Jansen became just the fourth Proteas quick to claim a five-wicket haul on Indian soil, joining Klusener, Steyn and Kyle Abbott.
More remarkably, he is only the third left-arm pacer since 1988 to take a Test five-for in India, alongside India’s own Zaheer Khan (three times) and Australia’s Mitchell Johnson (Mohali 2010).
His method, predominantly short or back-of-length deliveries, places him in rare company. Since the 2006 English summer, only four seamers have taken six wickets in a Test innings using mostly short-pitched deliveries:
Neil Wagner (NZ v Australia, Christchurch 2016)
Wagner (NZ v West Indies, Wellington 2017)
Blessing Muzarabani (Zimbabwe v Ireland, Bulawayo 2025)
Marco Jansen (SA v India, Guwahati 2025)
In Asian conditions during the same period, just two other fast bowlers have managed even five wickets primarily with short balls: Yasir Arafat (Pak v India, Bengaluru 2007) and Anrich Nortje (SA v Pakistan, Rawalpindi 2021).
Earlier, Jansen had transformed the Proteas innings with clean, disdainful striking. His seven sixes equalled the record for most maximums hit by a batter in a Test innings against India, a mark previously held solely by Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi (2006).
India remain the only Test side against whom Jansen has a hundred-plus aggregate.
By combining a fifty and a five-wicket haul in the same Test in India, Jansen joined an exclusive list of visiting cricketers to achieve the double since 2000:
Nicky Boje (South Africa): Bengaluru 2000
Jason Holder (West Indies): Hyderabad 2008
Marco Jansen (South Africa): Guwahati 2025
With at least one more innings to come both with bat and ball, the 25-year-old could yet add further entries to an already swollen record book by the time this Test reaches its conclusion.
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