India v South Africa, 4th Test, Day 4 - At last, the South African batsmen exhibit resolve!

Resolve has been the factor which helped England to conquer India in 2012 and if any non-subcontinental team, at present, wish to win a Test series in India then he must give the priority of spending time at the crease more rather than applying the idea of playing strokes from the word go in the name of positive cricket. Such tactics work well in Twenty20 circus shows and not in India or subcontinental tracks.

Have the Proteas think tank forgotten Neil McKenzie’s resolve and occupation at the crease at Chennai in 2008? Well, it was not a rank turner, but taming Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh was not an easy task at all.

Surprisingly, the South African batsmen realized the importance of resolve very late and Amla, AB de Villiers’ and Co’s such a sturdy resistance were needed since the first Test.

I didn’t understand why people were trolling Amla? When a batsman is going through a lean patch, they can apply two things: either play attacking cricket or spend time at the crease as much as possible. Amla went for the latter one and I don’t see anything wrong with this.

Why Amla has been able to spend so much time at the crease? Do guys remember my post two days back where I said to adjust the back lift a bit against the  spinners? Amla played the spinners with a lower back lift and he crouched a bit to read the uneven bounce of the Kotla track. The same ploy was adopted by AB de Villiers and Bavuma as well. Why their batters didn’t adopt this earlier remains a moot question.

Don’t you dare to say that it was a boring days of cricket. It was an attritional days of cricket where the battle of patience was exhibited brilliantly by Amla and co.

Thank You

Faisal Caesar