Guwahati: Sai Sudharsan was careless, Dhruv Jurel was indiscreet and skipper Rishabh Pant plain irresponsible as a progressively ugly Indian batting collapse left them on the brink of an embarrassing home series whitewash against South Africa here on Monday.
On a pitch that Kuldeep Yadav had compared to a “road”, the Indian batters were bounced out for a lowly 201 in their first innings by a 6 feet 8 inches tall pacer Marco Jansen, who returned a haul of 6 for 48 after smashing 93 on the second day.
At stumps on the third day of the second and final Test here, South Africa were 26 for no loss and had consolidated their overall lead to 314, aiming to give India a target in excess of 450 and with 120 overs in hand for their bowlers.
Jansen will cherish his performance on Monday as it came in conditions where there was nothing much for any type of bowler.
While head coach Gautam Gambhir copped a lot of flak for the choice of a rank turner pitch in Kolkata, no one should mind a dressing down from the fiery former batter after the poor game awareness displayed by home batters during the first session and a half of the third day.
Yashasvi Jaiswal (58) and KL Rahul (22) had given the team a steady start but both were a tad unlucky to get the only two deliveries from spinners that bounced from length to see their back.
Slumping from 95 for 1 to 122 for 7 required a cavalier attitude towards opposition’s bowling attack and lack of respect for the game situation. The Indians, on Monday, were guilty of both.
Sudharsan (15), Jurel 0) and Pant (7) were out in a space of 13 balls and wouldn’t like to look at those dismissals again.
In the dug-out, the head coach helplessly watched what could be mildly termed as a “collective brain fade”.
The pitch was the kind on which one merely needed to play normal cricket and stick around as spinners, after the dismissal of the two openers, hardly made any impact.
The dogged as ever Washington Sundar (48 off 92 balls) added 62 runs in just under 35 overs with the gutsy Kuldeep Yadav (19 off 134 balls).
Nearly 35 overs constitute a session and if Kuldeep could bat for over two hours, Jurel and Pant would need to introspect what they could have achieved if they had shown a bit of common sense.
Sudharsan is unlikely to get any more opportunities in Test matches when India restart red-ball cricket against Sri Lanka after six months. One of the reasons would be a failure to learn from his mistakes.
The manner in which he got out on Monday was identical to his dismissal in the first Test against the West Indies.
The ball from Simon Harmer was slightly short on length and his immediate reaction was to rock back and play the pull.
In the Ahmedabad game last month, he was leg before, missing the ball all over and in Guwahati, the pull shot never had the elevation as Ryan Rickleton pulled off a fine catch at mid-wicket.
Jurel took the bait of a short ball outside the off-stump but the pace of the delivery was slower than expected. The resultant pull shot never got the desired elevation and ballooned up leading to his dismissal. The choice of such a shot with five just minutes to go for tea was questionable.
The most disappointing was skipper Pant’s shot-selection and dismissal despite being well aware that the team is in doldrums. Knowing his propensity to charge down the track to pacers, Jansen cleverly shortened the length further.
Pant had jumped out for an ugly cross-batted hoick and the thin edge was taken by Kyle Verreynne behind the stumps.
Suddenly, India were 102 for 5 and then Nitish Kumar Reddy (10) and Ravindra Jadeja (6), the two all-rounders, were sorted by well-directed short balls delivered at the body by Jansen.
The Proteas have enough time to force a positive result and go home with a 2-0 result. For India, a hard-earned draw would feel like a moral victory.
For Gambhir though, his reputation as a red-ball coach will take a beating once again even if Pant and company happen to save the game.
