Jasprit Bumrah impressed in his first Test series. Reuters
Virat Kohli wanted the world to know that one statistic. Indians, for the first time, had taken 60 wickets in an away series, with pacers taking 53 of them. This was what made the Indian skipper feel that he had cracked the ‘away’ Test code. He now had the template to win broad, even if the hosts provided those once-dreaded green and bouncy tracks.
This wasn’t a tour which would end with the captain moaning about the unfair tracks that suited the home team or the ineffectiveness of their trump cards – the spinners. The post mortem wasn’t about why R Ashwin couldn’t take India home at the Centurion track that, as South Africa coach Ottis Gibson said, was more like Mumbai. It could have very nearly been the case had the pacers not stepped up in the final session on Saturday.
While Hashim Amla and Dean Elgar were at the crease, the South Africans seemed to be running away with the match. The 3-0 whitewash seemed very likely with the score reading 124/1. Ishant Sharma and Bhuvneshwar Kumar didn’t have the best of days early in the morning and went wickeless. This was when the new-found pace depth bailed them out. This has been the tour where India have made fans believe that if “Ishant and Bhuvneshwar wouldn’t get you, Bumrah and Shami would.” This time, it was Ishant’s turn to break the Amla-Elgar stand. That frustrating shuffle across the crease would be ended by a full-length ball on the pads. Like in the first innings, Amla would not be able to keep the ball down.
Bumrah, the man playing his first Test series, would get AB de Villiers. Kohli would appreciate the effort of his man, someone who he throws the ball to whenever in trouble.
“He fits perfectly into the ideal XI for us. He is someone that has given us breakthroughs when wanted in the series, he has bowled his heart out. So, I am really happy for him, he really wanted Test cricket badly and has shown what a high-class bowler he is,” he said.
Kohli wasn’t over yet, he went on to add, “He probably bowled with the experience of a guy who has played 40-50 games. If you see his pitch map, only three balls today were full-length deliveries, everything was length and back-of- length, and he really made life difficult for the South African batsmen.”
After getting rid of the Protea Big Two, Shami would come in a mop up the tail. He would bowl those heavy balls that tail-enders couldn’t handle. Shami would finish with 15 scalps in this series to be the joint-highest wicket-taker. It was this second wind of the pacers that delighted Kohli and made him positive about the days ahead.
“The bowlers had to work really hard today. They didn’t get much help from the wicket today, but the character that we showed today, it will give us the belief that we can do it again and keep on doing it. We knew that if we played better in pressure situations than them, we would win. And we did that in this Test match. This win was very important from our and the Indian team’s point of view, and we were determined to win this match.”
With this new found pace muscle, Kohli can throw his weight around even when abroad.