India wins, series drawn

For the first time in the series, on a surface that suited them perfectly, the Indian bowlers dominated proceedings in the third Test match and bowled out the South Africans in their second innings for just 121.  The South African top order that performed admirably well in the first innings struggled to score and once Sehwag broke through the defenses of Kallis and Smith, Harbhajan and Ishant ran through the rest of the lineup.

Earlier in the day, Ishant and Sreesanth had frustrated the South Africans with an often lucky partnership to help India stretch its first innings lead to 60.  Although they lost the openers, the Indians knocked off the 62 runs required for victory quite easily, squaring the series and thereby managing to hold on to their number two ranking in the ICC list.

For an Indian fan this was a rather disappointing series; other than Sehwag's triple century at Chennai and the fascinating contest the first two days of this Test match provided - that's three days out of the 15 days of cricket (well, actually it was three out of 11, since the last two matches ended in just three days) - there was nothing else to cheer about. Hopefully, with IPL coming up soon, there is plenty to look forward to.

After the Indian collapse in the second Test match, I struggled to understand how a team that had performed reasonably well on green pitches in recent times could bat so poorly. Agreed, the South Africans bowled incredibly well, still, 76 all out just didn't make any sense. This Kanpur pitch, if nothing else, has provided a way to compare the performance of the South African batsmen. In the first innings, faced with a dry, cracking pitch, their top order batsmen played to a plan, batted with purpose and at least for the first half of the innings tackled the spinners with ease. In the second innings though, the same batsmen seemed lost, struggled to score and looked baffled against spin!

I guess as a batsman, irrespective of how well you plan ahead and mentally prepare yourself for the kind of shots you need to play on a given surface, on alien conditions, it is indeed difficult to execute your plans effectively - sometimes you succeed, but sometimes you fail. The collapse was probably not due to lack of plan or application, but just a lack of experience playing quality pace bowling on such green-top pitches. And that makes those wins in Perth and Headingley even more incredible!

Kanpur Test interestingly poised

The third Test match between India and South Africa is interestingly poised after India ended day two on 288r for nine - 23 runs more than the 265 the South Africans made on day one.

The crumbling pitch with uneven bounce made batting hard, but that was only until Laxman came in to bat. He batted with such elegance and composure that you wondered if he in fact relished such conditions! And just when it looked like he along with a very determined Dravid had tamed the conditions, both fell to totally unplayable deliveries from Morkel leaving India tattering at 123 for four.

And then Ganguly stepped in and took charge. He ran hard for the singles, rotated the strike, put away the bad balls, never missed an opportunity to score and remained unperturbed when the odd ball bounced or turned viciously missing his bat. In short, it was the perfect innings for the conditions. Though he missed a well deserved century, this innings of 87 should rank among the very best he has ever played. He was ably helped by cameos from Yuvraj and Dhoni; though Dhoni should be kicking himself for the moment of madness that ended his innings.

Two days, 553 runs and 19 wickets later, the match is still evenly balanced with neither side holding any distinctive advantage. After a rather dull two Test matches at Chennai and Ahmedabad, it has taken a dry and deteriorating pitch to produce two consecutive days of fascinating cricket!