Proteas hoping for fair wicket

Lungani Zama hopes that the final Test between India and South Africa will finally be a decent contest between batt and ball.

New Delhi – Indian leg-spinner Amit Mishra poured scorn over South Africa’s hopes of a more playable wicket in New Delhi, saying that the tourists were clutching at straws, after a tough series on conditions they haven’t been able to conquer.

“I think they are talking like that because their confidence is very low,” observed Mishra, who has taken seven wickets in the series.

While that tally is miniscule compared to Ravichandran Ashwin (24) and Ravindra Jadeja (16), Mishra has made a habit of picking up big wickets, like AB de Villiers in both innings of the first Test, and a dogged Hashim Amla in Nagpur.

“Yes, that is important for me. When you take important wickets and the team wins, that is what matters. It’s not about bowling 20 overs and not taking wickets. If you bowl small spells and take crucial wickets, that is important for me and the team,” he explained.

For India, then, the final Test in Delhi should be business as usual. As they have brazenly maintained, if that business is conducted in three days or less, “hell with five days”.

Yesterday, India found support from an unlikely source, as South African assistant coach Adrian Birrell offered a diplomatic response when asked for his thoughts.

“You have to look at it beyond India, from a worldwide perspective. There’s quite a lot of Test matches finishing early, very few Test matches go the distance. We have just had the first day night Test in Australia, which also finished in three days. There are not a lot of draws around, the game is a lot faster now. I don’t know if that’s because of T20 cricket,” Birrell mused.

“I don’t want to say it’s a good or bad thing, but every nation is trying to win a Test series. India have beaten us, and they have outplayed us, and we have no complaints about that.”

In order to beat India, Birrell admits that South Africa will have to defuse Ashwin, who has been rampant up to this point.

“I think he is tighter than anyone, so there are no bad balls. That has been the difference. We have given away some easy runs, but we had to fight for every run, always under pressure.

“He is also at the top of his game, and bowling really well,” Birrell shrugged.

Mishra is also part of the conundrum, though to a lesser extent. When asked his thoughts on the pitches provided, the leg-spinner - like every other Indian who has come to the press - played it down.

“On any wicket, it never happens that even though the batsman played well, the ball hits a spot or bounces and then he gets out. I accept that there is more spin than normal. But they are not able to survive because of their technique. If you can better your technique, then you can play good cricket here.”

That insistence of South Africa’s poor technique was hit by a late blow from above yesterday, after the ICC released a statement confirming that match referee Geoff Crowe had marked the Nagpur wicket as “poor” in his match report.

A poor wicket is marked thus due to four factors, which include excessive seam movement, excessive unevenness of bounce at any stage, excessive assistance to spin bowlers, especially early in the match, and the other extreme, a wicket which has no seam movement or turn at any stage, thus depriving the bowlers of a fair contest between bat and ball.

The Delhi wicket that will host the fourth and final Test looks like it will provide a fair contest and, perhaps, momentarily shift the focus to the players themselves, instead of the conditions.

An entire Test series has already been marred by what many have bemoaned as unsporting wickets, even as India protested that there was nothing wrong with them.

Tomorrow, hopefully, we will have ourselves a tasty, one-off Test, between two sides filled with great batsmen and bowlers, on a wicket that provides something for everyone.

Hopefully!

Likely teams:

India: Murali Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli (capt), Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, R Ashwin, Amit Mishra, Ishant Sharma.

South Africa: Dean Elgar, Temba Bavuma, Faf du Plessis, Hashim Amla (capt), AB de Villiers, JP Duminy, Dane Vilas, Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Dane Piedt, Imran Tahir. - The Star