oppn parties Positives From India's South African Tour

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  • Sikh extremists attacked a cinema hall in London that was playing Kangana Ranaut's controversial film 'Emergency'
  • A Delhi court directed the investigating agencies to senstize officers to collect nail clippings, fingernail scrappings or finger swab in order to get DNA profile as direct evidence of sexual attack is often not present and might result in an offender going scot free
  • Uniform Civil Code rules cleared by state cabinet, likely to be implemented in the next 10 days
  • Supreme Court reiterates that there is no point in arresting the accused after the chargesheet has been filed and the investigation is complete
  • Kolkata court sentences Sanjoy Roy, the sole accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case, to life term. West Bengal government and CBI to appeal in HC for the death penalty
  • Supreme Court stays criminal defamation case against Rahul Gandhi for his remarks against home minister Amit Shah in Jharkhand during the AICC plenary session
  • Government reviews import basket to align it with the policies of the Trump administration
  • NCLT orders liquidation of GoAir airlines
  • Archery - Indian archers bagged 2 silver in Nimes Archery tournament in France
  • Stocks make impressive gain on Monday - Sensex adds 454 points to 77073 and Nifty 141 points to 23344
  • D Gukesh draws with Fabiano Caruana in the Tata Steel chess tournament in the Netherlands
  • Women's U-19 T20 WC - In a stunning game, debutants Nigeria beat New Zealand by 2 runs
  • Rohit Sharma to play under Ajinkye Rahane in Mumbai's Ranji match against J&K
  • Virat Kohli to play in Delhi's last group Ranji trophy match against Saurashtra. This will be his first Ranji match in 12 years
  • The toll in the Rajouri mystery illness case rose to 17 even as the Centre sent a team to study the situation
Calling the case not 'rarest of rare', a court in Kolkata sentenced Sanjay Roy, the only accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case to life in prison until death
oppn parties
Positives From India's South African Tour

By Slogger
First publised on 2018-01-29 20:51:54

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Holding an extreme view and carting the ball out of the park is what interests him most. He is a hard hitter at all times. Fasten your seatbelts and read.
India finally played to potential and beat South Africa in the third Test. But when one analyzes the whole series, it seems that victory was always within India’s reach but the team let it slip due to three reasons: faulty team selection, atrocious shot selection by batsmen and then having difficulty in getting South African tailenders out in quick time.

One knows that Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri will disagree but team selection on this tour have been baffling, to say the least. Given his known weakness against the moving and rising ball, it was too much to expect Rohit Sharma to continue his good recent form on flat Indian pitches in South Africa. Hence, it was wrong to select him in the first two Tests and let Ajinkye Rahane sit them out. Further, an all pace attack works well in South Africa, especially when we have the likes of Bhubhaneswar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah and Ishant Sharma in the ranks. So playing Ravichandran Ashiwn and then giving him just a few overs was not good. Finally, why play Parthiv Patel who is a liability behind the wickets? He is not a better batsman than Saha and he is definitely worse as a wicketkeeper.

In retrospect, if the Indian batsmen had stitched together just 20 or 30 more runs in each of the innings in the first two Tests and if the Indian bowlers had quickly demolished the South African tail, India could have won the series 2-1 or even 3-0. Hence, there are a lot of positives that the team can take from this series. It is no mean feat for a team considered to be a strong batting unit to take all ten wickets of the opposition in each innings of the three Tests. Indian bowlers matched the South Africans stride for stride and wicket for wicket. It was most heartening to see the Indians for once not being the only ones at the receiving end of body blows.

With the Test series ending on a positive note for the Indian team, one hopes that they will win the one dayers and T20’s to make this tour truly memorable and improve their rankings in the two shorter formats. This team is now settling down and will emerge as India’s best bet on overseas tours.