***Official*** South Africa in India 2015

[Daemon]

Could pick that googly from my grainy stream. Can't put my finger on why it was so obvious. Probably the fact that he tried to push it wider outside off so it would spin back in.

 

[indiaholic]

Maybe this is true, but I still don't think its a good test cricket wicket... and I personally don't see it helping India test cricket team improve, in the long run.

40 wickets in 3 days of the Mohali test, sorry I don't consider that good balance. Bengaluru was a better wicket, SA just batted like sh*t...

Dude the Mohali test had a lot of terrible batting. I remember that you agreed with me when I said that it was a 300 par pitch.

See all you need to win on pitches like these are spinners whose quality is roughly equivalent to a Sreesanth on helpful pitches. If SA come up with a spinner of that quality, India will immediately regret the decision to have a pitch like this.

 

[harsh.ag]

Love the XI btw. Rohit, mishra in, Binny, Aaron out. Perfect.

Rohit for Aaron is huge. Makes the batting so strong that Ashwin could potentially bat at 10 (assuming they persist with Mishra coming ahead of him)

Yeah, love the team. Picking Aaron would have been an indulgent mistake. Morkel's delivery there though!

 

[OverratedSanity]

I don't like these pitches either. Not because of the reasons stphndbsn gives but that square turners have just ended up backfiring on us so many times.

 

[Contra]

Maybe this is true, but I still don't think its a good test cricket wicket... and I personally don't see it helping India test cricket team improve, in the long run.

40 wickets in 3 days of the Mohali test, sorry I don't consider that good balance. Bengaluru was a better wicket, SA just batted like sh*t...

Pitches aren't prepared to "improve teams", they are their to be played cricket on, will SA produce spinning wickets to get better at spin? I'd laugh if they did.

Also you act as if SA have never produced conditions that make a ridiculous number of wickets falling in a day, remember Aus-SA 2011? I sure do.

It's easy to blame the pitches when the real problem is the general quality of batsmenship, India aren't AS GOOD as they were before, and SA have mostly inexperienced players with a few good ones. The bowlers in this series are overall better than the batsmen and its showing.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Oh man its reversing. Thank **** they don't have Steyn.

 

[indiaholic]

I don't like these pitches either. Not because of the reasons stphndbsn gives but that square turners have just ended up backfiring on us so many times.

So this.. It allows players like Elgar to run through sides. But I find these better than leaving grass on Indian pitches.

 

[Daemon]

I don't think there needs to be a perfect balance between bat and ball. As long as either good balls get wickets or good batting gets runs, I'm happy. What I dislike is good bowling being ineffective and uneven bounce. To an extent the wickets in this series haven't been great because just doing the basics of spin bowling gets you wickets, but the first criteria of only good batting getting runs has been fulfilled so I'm not really fussed.

 

[Teja.]

****, that movement from Morkel.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Vijay has delivered the goods each innings this series so far. Wag.

 

[harsh.ag]

Wow Morkel!!!

 

[Contra]

crap, good ball.

 

[dermo]

fmd what a peach

 

[Contra]

Vijay has delivered the goods each innings this series so far. Wag.

You are to blame for this you ****

 

[StephenZA]

Well I was wrong about Morkel bowling again in this innings....great wicket!

 

[harsh.ag]

Man, thank god we have to face Rabada and not Steyn as Morkel's partner here. Whew.

 

[Gnske]

Bloody good innings though

 

[OverratedSanity]

Dammit

Steyn would've gone Nagpur 2010 on our asses here.

 

[Teja.]

I'm on the star sports stream which is on delay by a few minutes. Reading about a wicket here and watching on the stream with the depressing inevitability of the wicket happening in the next few balls has to be one of the sadder phenomenons of the modern age.

 

[social]

Its just a simple case of people getting use to India shelling out roads towards the end of 2000's so opposition teams got a false sense of security that they could do well in India. Thankfully we finally decided to provide true Indian pitches and now everyone's throwing their toys out.

Also there is perfectly good competition between bat and ball, the quality batsmen have stepped up and scored, the rest have fallen.

Sorry but this pitch is rubbish

When a spinner takes a chunk out of the pitch on the first morning, you know something is seriously amiss