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South Africa beat India by just 4 runs in the third and final one-day international (ODI) at Newlands in Cape Town today that went down the wire thanks to at least one Indian batsman fighting for a win, clean sweeping the 3-match ODI Series 3-0, dishing out to India its fifth consecutive defeat in this South Africa tour including the two Tests and three ODIs. Led this time by wicketkeeper-batsman Quinton de Kock with a brilliant century (124) building a 144-run partnership with Dussen (52) South Africa put up an imposing total of 287 (exactly the total put up by India in the second ODI that SA chased easily) despite India’s change of strategy to bowl first after KL Rahul won the toss for the second time. For a change the Indian bowlers got the Proteas all out in the penultimate ball this time thanks mainly to Prasidh Krishna's 3 wickets; however, the hosts did overcome a mini collapse in the middle to put up a total that finally proved to be enough. In light of the fast-paced track

The sudden stepping down, somewhat inevitable, of Virat Kohli from test captaincy has started a raging speculation in India about who would be or ought to be the new Test captain. Earlier in the year 2021 we had suggested a split-captaincy regime, particularly after the stand-in Test captain Ajinkya Rahane led India to an incredible Series victory over Australia in Australia overcoming the 36-all out syndrome and the departure of Virat for home. Rahane had been the test vice-captain for quite some time and therefore, there should’ve been no hassles to make him the regular captain, relieving Kohli the burden of captaining all three formats. In hindsight, we can say that had that decision been taken Kohli would’ve continued to be the white-ball captain thus the confrontations and ego-plays between BCCI and Kohli could’ve been avoided. However, that was not done, and during the last one year Rahane has been in very poor form and perhaps he had played the last innings of his test career th

It was not entirely unexpected even though millions of his fans are just thunderstruck today by his sudden announcement to step down from Test captaincy, just the day after losing the Cape Town Test; because what had been happening in the last few months over the split-captaincy controversy definitely left its mark on the mind of the most successful captain of Indian Test cricket, Virat Kohli, with 40 Test victories out of 68 tests, including both home and away ones, under his leadership during in the last seven years. However, a 1-2 series loss to South Africa is not such a huge tragedy that should make the captain take the responsibility and step down. There are other factors leading to his decision apart from the split-captaincy issue to which we’ll come a bit later: ·        Virat has not been amongst the runs in the last two years without being able to score a single century, and his batting abilities were being questioned repeatedly. ·        Virat not being able to win the W

  Photo: file (wikipedia.org) South Africa beat India by 7 wickets at the Newlands Cricket Ground in Cape Town on the fourth day today of the third and last match winning the Test Series 2-1, thus keeping their unbeaten record against India in Tests at home. Excellent bowling  and true-to-potential spells by SA pacers Rabada, Jansen and Ngidi ensured South Africa chase a total less than 250 runs like they did in the second Test in Johannesburg. And like in the second test the Proteas chased the even lighter target of 212 runs professionally with consistent batsmanship losing only three wickets and romping home in the 64 th over. Ever consistent Keegan Petersen who scored 72 and 82 in this match was rightfully declared the Player of the Series. Captain Dean Elgar again led the team to a healthy start scoring 30 runs building the momentum with Petersen, and Dussen (41 not out) and Bavuma (32 not out) did the rest. This is one of the resounding Test Series victories for South Africa, goi

  South Africa captain Dean Elgar (96 not out) led from the front to clinch what finally turned out to be an easy victory over India in the second Test at the Wanderers in Johannesburg and level the 3-match Test Series 1-1. It is rather unfortunate that Dean could not complete what would have been a most memorable century, particularly in light of the fact that this win has ended India’s streak of 5 consecutive Test victories over the Proteas that started at the Wanderers in 2018 and later at Indian venues. The South Africa chase, interrupted by rains on the fourth day, is perhaps the best batting display in this series so far with every batsman contributing and partnerships blossoming throughout. Dean crafted an opening stand of 47 runs with Markram (31); 46-run partnership with Peterson (28); 82-run partnership with Rassie van der Dussen (40); and finally, an unbeaten 68-run partnership with Bavuma (23 not out). This is third biggest chase by any team at the Wanderers that proved man

  It came as shocker just before the start of the 2 nd Test between India and South Africa at the Wanderers in Johannesburg that India captain Viral Kohli was not playing due to back pain and that KL Rahul would lead India as the stand-in test captain for the first time. Rahul won the toss and confirmed the news about Virat and that Hanuma Vihari was the replacement. Only a day back head coach Rahul Dravid lauded Virat’s performances ‘despite the noise’ and that the team would keep up the intensity to win. Something was just not right simply due to the reason as to why should a leading team lose its intensity, considering the fact that India had never lost at this venue before and registered two of the three victories over the Proteas so far here. Whatever be the actual reasons for whatever is happening in the dressing rooms it is bad news for Indian cricket. Out-of-form Pujara gets another chance and Vihari gets a berth in place of the captain himself. India elected to bat and what f

  On the very first assignment as the regular One-Day International (ODI) captain for the India’s South Africa Tour-2021-22 and in the aftermath of the Virat split-captaincy controversy Rohit Sharma was finally ruled out of the full tour. This comes as a huge setback for Team India who has been doing well to take a 1-0 lead in the Test Series with the 3-match ODI Series to start from 19 th January 2022. Rohit had been suffering from a hamstring injury and was earlier ruled out for the Test Series which led to a lot of speculation about test captain Virat not playing the ODIs under the leadership of Rohit. As we wrote about Virat Kohli deciding to play the ODIs in his pre-tour press conference where he dropped a bombshell involving the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) President Sourav Ganguly and it was not made clear till now who was probably lying with Ganguly saying the matter would to be sorted out as and when appropriate and the latter going down with COVID infection s

  India beat South Africa by 113 runs just after lunch on the fifth and final day of the first Test in Centurion today, conquering the fortress called Centurion. This grand victory is the first ever to be registered by India at the SuperSport Park in Centurion and in fact, Virat Kohli becomes the first Asian captain to do so. The Proteas, set a target of 305 runs to win, started badly yesterday losing four early wickets for 94 runs; but thanks to captain Dean Elgar (77) they managed to reach 182/7 at lunch today with Temba Bavuma (35 not out) and Marco Jansen (13) at the crease, the last pair with some batsmanship abilities. However, immediately after lunch Mohammed Shami devoured Jansen, his third victim in this innings, thus taking his match tally to 8 wickets after his definitive fifer in the SA first innings which completed his 200 scalps in test cricket. The last two wickets of Rabada and Ngidi were taken by the lone India spinner R Ashwin, as the hosts were all out for 191 runs,

India got into a strong position on the first day of the 1 st Boxing Day Test against South Africa at the SuperSport Park in Centurion today, India at 272/3 at stumps off the full 90 overs. This is thanks to a technically sound unbeaten century crafted by opener and the stand-in vice-captain KL Rahul (122 not out in 248 balls) who first built up a 117-run opening partnership with Mayank Agarwal (60), then an 82-run one with captain Virat Kohli (35) and an unbeaten 4 th wicket partnership of 73 runs with Ajinkya Rahane (40 not out), batting out the full day on a pacy and bouncy pitch most suited for fast bowlers. Other than the luckless Cheteshwar Pujara who is literally playing for his place with players like Shreyas Iyer and Hanuma Vihari in reserve and who is without a ton in his last 43 innings got out for a first-ball duck, all batsmen so far have contributed well. For South Africa all the three wickets were captured by Lungi Ngidi. The host team must be sorely missing the servic

A bombshell dropped by a tweet of the former India captain Mohammed Azharuddin that indicated a possible rift between Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma over the issue of split-captaincy which was lapped up fondly by a juicily speculative news and social media, aiming inevitably for a crescendoing climax at the most eagerly looked for press conference by the India Test captain Virat Kohli today in Mumbai finally ended with a cool and composed Kohli answering the questions candidly and bravely. To my knowledge he is the first captain of the Indian cricket team to have publicly questioned the functioning style of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) by implying clearly a lack of communication between the board and him or other players.   Virat said that the Chief Selector contacted him only one and half hours before informing him about their decision to sack him as the ODI (50-over one day international) captain in favor of Rohit Sharma to which Virat, as he had disclosed, resp

The regime of having different captains for different formats for which we have been writing in these pages has finally happened with the Indian cricket selectors making opener Rohit Sharma the regular captain in the ODIs and T20Is with effect from India’s tour of South Africa-2021-22 while the captain of all formats since 2017, Virat Kohli, has been retained as captain for the 3-match Test Series starting on the boxing day, 26 th December 2021, in Centurion. This move, probably under the guidance of the new Head Coach Rahul Dravid, is ideally aimed at allowing the wonder of a batsman Virat Kohli to play freely and most importantly, in view of the ICC Men’s World Cup-2023 to be hosted by India for the one day format. This could also be a reflection of the fact that Virat is yet to win an ICC Cup! It is unfortunate that Ajinkya Rahane, the hero of the great Indian comeback in Australia in January this year when Kohli left for home for domestic reasons, has lost his place in Tests as vi