 India
will play South Africa in the third Test match of the series from January
2. The Test match will be played at Newlands in Cape Town and will see India and
South Africa fighting to win it and the series. both the sides have won one game
each and the game promises to be a humdinger of a battle.
In the first Test match, the South Africans got the better of the conditions
and bowled Indians out for 136 on a green, moist track. After that, the pitch
became much better to bat on and it made life much easier for South Africa that
Zaheer Khan was out of the game due to injury. South Africa went on to score
more than 600 and in the end, India batted well in the second innings but that
was not enough to pull them out of the mire.
Click for Live Score Card of South Africa Vs India
In the second Test match, India were put in to bat again on a grassy, bouncy
wicket and they batted better to get to more than 200. However, if South Africa
thought that they could have it easy again, they were proved wrong by the duo
of Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh, who shared seven wickets.
In reply, India set the opposition a target of 300 plus for a win thanks
to VVS Laxman's 96 which the home team failed to achieve. The amazing thing
about Laxman's knock was that after his 96, the next best score in the game
was 39.
With the score now at 1-1, things will be much more difficult for the teams
to do much about the fact that they will play on a track which will offer many
runs to the batsmen. The Indian bowlers have usually struggled to bowl oppositions
out on pitches that afford no help to the bowlers given that none of them have
the pace to intimidate the opposition like how the South Africans have Dale Steyn with his pace and Morne Morkel with his height.
In the third Test match, there will be any internal battles that will go on
to decide the course of the game as well. There has been a lot of chirp about
how South African have neither been happy with the lack of UDRS nor have been
too pleased with umpire Steve Davies' drinking binge. This will mean that the
third game could see the two side fight out an even battle and a one in which
the teams will need to win to take home the series.
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