Proteas pulverise India
Dale Steyn claimed 10 wickets in the match as South Africa smashed India by an innings and six runs in Nagpur.
The visitors required eight wickets on the fourth day and although their ground fielding was below-par at times after two full days in the field, for the most part the bowlers remained disciplined.
Steyn will rightfully take the plaudits for his first innings demolition job, but importantly for the South Africans Paul Harris played a holding role on a turning wicket. Harris was attacked by the England batsmen at home and didn’t have the answers, but was allowed to settle by the Indians in this Test, and he restored a degree of confidence after being dropped for The Wanderers encounter last month.
The left-arm spinner still struggled with his length, but went at two an over bowling his leg-stump line from over the wicket and also claimed the wickets of Murali Vijay, Sachin Tendulkar – who scored his 46th Test century – and MS Dhoni.
At 209-6, Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh provided some frustration with their 50-run partnerships with Wriddhiman Saha, but once Khan departed after a Jacques Kallis-bouncer, Steyn wrapped up the tail to end with match figures of 10-108.
This was Dhoni’s first Test loss as captain and while no victory in India should be scoffed at, the South Africans will realise the hosts were missing a number of top batsmen in Yuvraj Singh, VVS Laxman, and Rahul Dravid.
Singh and Dravid are likely to be ruled out for the second Test, but Laxman could return and his presence will provide the Indian middle order with greater experience and backbone as South Africa search for the series win that will see them go top of the ICC world rankings.
South Africa (1st innings) – 558-6 declared
Hashim Amla 253, Jacques Kallis 173, AB de Villiers 53, Zaheer Khan 3-96.
India (1st innings) – 233
Virender Sehwag 109, Subramaniam Badrinath 56, Dale Steyn 7-51
India (2nd innings) – 319
Sachin Tendulkar 100, Dale Steyn 3-57, Paul Harris 3-76
South Africa won by an innings and six runs
Click here for full scorecard.
February 12th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
jay vergil, i mos do speak the truth my naaier
face the facts you racist coloured. ya vergil ya my tjommy
February 12th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
For all you okes who have a problem reading and understanding what I try to say, one last effort from my side.
1. Harris is the best spinner we currently have and should be in the team.
2. His overall test record is decent to good. Not very good or brilliant.
3. As a “holding” spinner he is a bit on the expensive side. His rpo should be nearer to 2rpo than 3rpo.
4. His season so far has been average in comparison with the previous season.
I really find it strange that other people like Kerneels can call his season “mediocre”, Gunther said “Harro is not setting the world alight” but yet when I say that he is having an average/below par season, I’m being accused of all sorts of things.
What gives?
February 12th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
strange thing is …. everytime harris gets dropped .. he comes back and has a blinder of a test … he’s not my fav cricketer, but i heard that he is brilliant in sledging aswell…
February 12th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
@Younis:
Come now boetie. “Fight club” is over and insulting each other on this forum is not part of the deal.
I don’t think your parents would be proud of you if they read what you just wrote, especially your Po.
February 12th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
It’s not an insult vergil. it’s the truth
what’s a po my tjommy
February 12th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
@nama1: Quickies tire out faster than spinners and must bowl short spells. And there is a big difference between a bowler’s strike rate (Steyn easily beats Harris) and an economy rate (Harris easily beats Steyn). Harris needs 74 balls for a stump; Gogga needed 66, so Harris needs one-and-a-half overs longer, but he concedes fewer runs per over than Adams, making the comparison much of a muchness.
As for spinners being “holding” or “attacking”, that’s really a mythical distinction invented by spectators and ill-informed commentators. All spinners are attacking spinners. All aim to take as many wickets as they can, either directly using spinning guile or by frustrating the batsman into rash aggression and then giving his wicket away. Murali, Warne and Harbhajan were guilemasters and few batsman would try tonking them, even if they did regularly accumulate the wickets of those who were foolish enough to try.
Most orthodox spinners generally end up with victims who are caught rather than bowled, though. They mistime shots owing to the subtle deception caused by small variations of line, length, flight, speed and turn rather than the majorly huge deceptions of a completely different wrong ‘un delivery such as a doosra or googly or flipper.
Spectators adore these huge deceptions because they understand them very easily. And they adored Gogga because of his very weird bowling action. They don’t, however, “get it” when an orthodox spinner bowls over after over of miserly orthodox deliveries. They are puzzled by the batsmen’s apparent cowardice in not hammering these apparently innocuous deliveries into the crowd at least three times an over. And they’ll bag the bowler for being “ineffective”, even when he bags a fifer.
That’s little more than an awful display of their own cricketing ignorance, really.
There is nobody more misunderstood and undervalued in modern crash-bang-wallop cricket than the orthodox slow bowler.
They are to any team what good brakes are to a car. Tyre-kickers and boy-racers don’t buy a car because it has good brakes; they’ll be obsessed with the speed, the acceleration, the handling, the looks, the fit, the finish and the resale value. But, when things go badly wrong and you have brilliant brakes, you’ll be grateful you had these unspectacular and undervalued components to save your bacon.
February 13th, 2010 at 8:46 am
I know that there is a big difference between the ER and SR. I only brought it up because you compared Steyn’s ER with that of Harris and in my view one should not do that because of the different roles they have within the team as far as their bowling is concerned.
It is exactly when this orthodox spinner bowls over after over that I would expect him to have a good ER as it is then his job to tie up one end in order to frustrate the batsman until he makes a mistake. Figures of 30 overs for something like 60-70 runs will then do it for me even if the spinner only took one or two wickets or none at all. But if he goes for something like 90-100 runs, I don’t think that he has done a good job. In Harris’ case he is still not consistent enough tying up one end, in other words not allowing the batsman to score at a rate of around 3rpo from his bowling.
February 13th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
He’s at 2.73rpo, not “around 3″. The great Warne is only marginally better at economy at 2.65, but with a great strike rate of 57.4. Murali is even better at ER 2.47 and SR 55.1. Harbhajan Singh is at ER 2.83 and SR 66.1 — meaning that Harris actually boasts a superior ER as well as a superior SR to the feared and universally-respected Turbanator! Dan Vettori has a ER of 2.62 and a SR of 76.7.
The point here is that whichever way you look at Harris’s bowling stats, he’s operating not a long distance away from the very best spinners in all of modern history, and he’s actually doing rather better (albeit marginally) than some of the other modern giants of the test spinner’s art. He’s right up there square in the middle of a group consisting of all the world’s top spinners.
His economy rate is truly world class. Even a legendary spinner only contains batsmen at something between 2.5 and 3 rpo. None manage to choke it all the way right down to 2rpo. And Harris is comfortably in the middle of that sweet 2.5-to-3 band. Can’t fault him there!
And then, he usually grabs a nice 5 wicket haul here and a 3 wicket haul there for himself — and the scorebook only shows the dismissals he got, and not the ones he provoked out of the frustrated batsmen who tonked the bowlers at the other end and paid the price.
That’s genuine world class value. The career numbers never lie.
February 13th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
@TheTackler: You’re a bit dumb mate.. ER has significance in Limited overs where as in the 5 dayers it is bullshit. Your average (Wicket per Inninings) is the deciding factor. The game is completely different in respect of bowling rules.. offside and wides. Negative bowling in the 5 dayers can always improve your ER that is why it is penalised with greater severity in the limited overs
February 13th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Pardon — Turbanator has a slightly better SR than Harris, whose numbers almost exactly mirror those of Vettori. And I’ve yet to hear any cricket pundit from anywhere hold the view that Vettori isn’t one of the very best spinners in the modern game or that he should be dropped.
February 13th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
@The Almighty Shaun: Meant to say legside.. still caught up in the rugby chat
February 13th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Career ER is HIGHLY significant in test cricket, which is precisely why Wisden keep a record of it. Career ER is irrelevant in ODI cricket, whereas it’s ER-per-each-match that counts.
In an ODI any spinner only gets 10 overs max anyway — nowhere near long enough to do in a batsman’s head properly as one can do in a test.
And you saw how expertly Harris bottled up the Indians at Nagpur, and provoked them into giving their wickets away with rash shots as they were gripped by the fear of being becalmed in the doldrums as their batting strike rates plunged.
He gently did their heads in completely. And so did Steyn, but by the brutal use of an entirely different instrument of mental torture.
The ODI brigade are a brutishly simple lot. Steyn’s blunt instrument isn’t too hard for them to grasp. The nuanced subtleties of test spinning is, however, pitched far above their mental crossbar.
ODI fans are into the cricket equivalent of Iron Maiden; test spin fans appreciate the more subtle stuff — the equivalent of an ostensibly-baffling Edgar Varese tone-poem, possibly.
February 13th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
YOu lost the plot mate.. Limited overs is about containing and therewith limiting the oppositions runs… Taking wickets is less important than reducing the runs. In 20/20 ER is a massive factor… But in 5day test cricket???.. Don’t be silly mate.
You qualify your argument by referring to wisden reporting on that bit of stats.. They report on many things.. average age,average caps, average lbw, catches…. and other less significant factors that can be measured…
For all the noise you make on this blog about quotas, etc.. your inability fathom the basics of cricket reduces your credibility even further in raising any rational arguments
February 13th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
@TheTackler: 128.
He DOES turn in figures of around 2rpo as a rule.
134
His career avg at 2.7 IS very comfortably below 3rpo.
At least we have now move away from the notion that Harris turn in figures of around 2rpo as a rule and accept that that is the exception hence his career ave of 2.73. Not bad if you compare it to the other recent top spinners in the world as you prove.
Your view that 2.7 is comfortable below 3rpo is probably debatable. I already stated what I regard as such and am not going into it again.
BTW, you should be careful using stats on this forum to prove a point. WP_, our resident cricket expert, does not like it very much and may start calling you a “stats monger” if you continue doing that.
February 13th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Oh shut up Nama you miserable little character
February 13th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
@WP_:
Come now WP_, calm down.
Just pour yourself another glass of that cheap red wine you like so much. What’s its name?
.
.
.
.
.
Oh yes…. Tassenberg or is it Oom Tas.
You sound like an oom Tas man to me.
February 13th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Come on you Lions!!!
February 13th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
166 nama
I really doubt that I’m the one who drinks th cheap wine in this situation. HAHAHA.
You are amusingly pathetic. Good for you
February 13th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
@WP_:
Why don’t you try another descriptive word. “pathetic” is becoming boring or is it the only one you know?
Oom Tas doen dit aan ‘n mens. Laat hak jou vas… hak jou vas…hak jou vas…ha
Your take on the Stormers performance?
February 13th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
169 nama
Yes it’s the only one I know.
Stormers were decent. Go Chiefs
February 13th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
@WP_:
Sorry to hear that.
February 13th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
171 nama
Oh you can hear? Suprising.
February 13th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
@WP_:
Good come back.
Yes. And feel, and see, and smell. All my senses are intact. It seems if you have lost some of yours.
Oom Tas does that if you over indulge. You should be careful. Where are we going to get another expert if you lose all of them?
February 13th, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Hey dude. Get over your little Oom Tas obsession. It’s borderline disturbing.
I know more about cricket now, than you will ever know in your sad little life, so goodbye
February 13th, 2010 at 9:49 pm
@WP_:
As long as you believe it, it will come true….one day.
February 13th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Believe it, novice
February 13th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
@The Almighty Shaun: Limited overs is indeed about containing, but if you only have 10 overs, you hardly even have time to get the oil in your sump warmed up.
Spinners in ODIs have a totally different sort of containment role — batsmen can’t use the speed of their deliveries to get the boundaries they seek and are therefore obliged to tonk them quite recklessly. Also, whenever a wicket falls, the new batsman takes time to get his eye in, and this curbs the run rate. So it makes a huge difference to his rpo rate if a spinner comes on at or near the fall of a wicket or whether he’s brought in to curb an eye-in pair of batsman flaying the seamers to the fence. There’s hardly any subtle mind-game playing going on in an ODI as there is in a test.
You can’t truly show your spinner’s bottling-up art in only 10 overs.
But, subtleties aside, you’ve been given factual proof by Wisden of how good a test spinner Harris is — an ER deeply below 3rpo, and up there on both ER and SR with the likes of Vettori and Harbhajan and not all that far off that of Warne and Murali.
Anyone who thinks Harris is an unworthy selection is an ignoramus foolishly reciting the dumb views of other ignoramuses as “proof”.
February 13th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
As for the 20/20 tip-and-run miss-and-giggle “sport” — that is to cricket what candy-floss is to a balanced diet.
February 13th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
20/20 is not cricket. It’s a circus.
February 14th, 2010 at 4:24 am
@WP_: Hear hear! ODIs aren’t real cricket either. They are a bit like cappuchinos made with instant coffee.
February 14th, 2010 at 8:05 am
@TheTackler: 177
I’m guessing here but I suppose your last paragraph is aimed at something I said about other bloggers also calling Harris’ season “mediocre”.
Now if only you can direct me to where I said that Harris is an “unworthy selection” or should not be in the team.
February 15th, 2010 at 2:48 am
Just as well you didn’t! It has, however, almost become the lyrics of a hit song performed by a choir of SA cricket scribes, including the clowns opining here, to bag Harris and insist on his unsuitability as a test spinner in spite of the record books proving them all wildly wrong.
I think he’s a world-class spinner and a deserved selection, and the numbers prove me right.
The trouble comes in when a bunch of couch yahoos who know diddly-squat about cricket in general and spin-bowling in particular suddenly feel that their dime-a-dozen-dimwit opinions count just as much as that of someone a whole lot better informed.
Dullards really get my dander up.