January 21st 2010 - South Africa vs India 4th ODI
Background
Current Situation: South Africa 1 – 2 India (5 match series)
South Africa took on a surging India at Port Elizabeth today in match 4 of this ODI series, it was a must win game for the Proteas. As a Pakistan supporter PE of course holds some very good memories back from 2003, when crushing centuries from Elahi and Razzaq led Pakistan to an unprecedented score of 330+ before Waqar Younis, Sami and Afridi ran through the South African batting to hand Pakistan an unexpected massive victory. So therefore perhaps it was no surprise at all that when Graeme Smith won the toss he had absolutely no hesitation in deciding to bat first!
Brief Match Description
It was soon apparent though that this wasn’t that same old batting paradise of a PE pitch, not only was there a bit of spongy bounce in the wicket, but it was a little two paced with the ball not coming onto the bat quite as easily. Despite this, Graeme Smith and Hashim Amla negotiated the early threat from Zaheer Khan and Munaf Patel. South Africa manouevered themselves into a brilliant position at 106-1 before embarking on a case of serious self destruction, they suffered no less than 3 very unnecessary and silly run outs as well as a stumping. They were only led out of that middle order collapse by a magnificent fighting innings from JP Duminy who hit an unbeaten 71 and he was ably supported by Botha and Peterson lower down the order. All this meant that South Africa in the end fought their way to a very competitive total of 265-7.
Nonetheless expectations were that the much vaunted Indian batting line up would at least make a very good fight of it if not overhaul the total entirely. As it turned out, nothing of the sort happened. The Indians collapsed to 128-6 before rain saved them from further embarrassment. The Duckworth Lewis method was applied and South Africa won by a comfortable margin of 48 runs.
Osiris's Views
I won’t deny that as a Pakistan fan, the only thing that comes close to the joys of watching my own team perform well is in fact watching the Indians lose heavily…heck just watching India losing fullstop is brilliant! Well I guess that’s the nature of the India – Pakistan rivalry. Therefore watching this game was great, it shows a very distinct fallability in the Indian batting setup. Having said that, adding some fair perspective…one must question the relevance of this current series to the upcoming World Cup. India are missing Gambhir, Sehwag and now Tendulkar as well, all of whom are in the Indian World Cup side. However the South Africans too are missing the colossus that this Jacques Kallis.
Overall, India are likely to view this South African series very positively, they drew the test series and are now 2-2 in the ODI series. As good as it is to watch the Indians losing or performing poorly, they do deserve respect for playing some very good cricket on this tour and once their star batting trio are back in the team for the world cup, their batting line up will assume formidable proportions that too in home conditions! With that in mind, I would say without hesitation that the Indians are favourites in my opinion to win the upcoming World Cup.
So then the most that is up for grabs in this series is a morale booster before the big showdown in the subcontinent, who gets that series clinching win? Well we’ll find out after the final match at Centurion on Sunday!
Signing off till then!
Osiris
