I frankly cant understand how people are ignoring the advantage of the toss. It is not rocket science, the team batting when the pitch is obviously at its "easist". Or were people running on the pitch before the match to create footmarks ...
Pray tell how the pitch deteriorated so rapidly at the beginning of day 2 that SA could barely manage a third of India's first innings total. Glad to listen.
I'm willing to accept, and in fact, share the following criticisms of the pitch:
1) That the pitch helped spin so much that even part timers were able to be far more threatening than their actual quality should allow them to
2) There was some inconsistent turn and bounce
3) It was extremely difficult to get set and the bat-ball balance was titled heavily in favour of the ball
However, the following are completely unsubstantiated and flat out wrong conclusions about the pitch and the match:
1) That the only way to play was to slog and that patient grafting would get you nowhere. Nonsense. Sure, you need to be positive but the fact that people found it possible to defend shots like Faf's in the first innings by blaming the pitch just blew my mind.
2) That the toss won India the match and guaranteed SA a defeat. No. South Africa collapsed like a heap on day 2 of the match. The pitch behaved pretty similarly throughout all 3 days. Amla and Faf managed to scrap together a good partnership in the 4th innings when the pitch was supposed to crumble into martian dust. If they'd batted half as well on day 2 and hadn't thrown their wickets away like complete numpties, SA would've been neck and neck with India.
So, no,
the toss didn't screw SA. SA screwed SA.
3) That the pitch made for a match which wasn't entertaining. Nope. Was lovely to watch imo. And
again, would've been a wonderfully close, tight game if SA hadn't batted like idiots on day 2.
That is all. Continue your ****fight but I've laid everything out here for both sides.
