India vs South Africa: Spinners do the trick, but the batting in Mohali was just terrible

This is going to be a curmudgeonly article so if that’s not your thing, you should probably stop reading right about now. Yes, India ended up cruising to victory inside three days in the first Test against South Africa in Mohali. Yes, it is a winning start for captain Virat Kohli at home. Yes, It is India’s third consecutive Test win and their seventh straight win at home. But my God ~some~ most of the batting was terrible. [caption id=“attachment_2499024” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Faf du Plessis is one of the many batsmen who would want to forget this Test in a hurry. AFP[/caption] Eighteen wickets fell in less than three sessions on the third day. India lost their last eight wickets for 39 runs. South Africa lost all 10 of theirs for 109. Sure, the pitch helped the spinners and the ball was keeping low but it wasn’t the spitting cobra it was being made out to be. The batsmen appeared to be infected by all the talk about the surface and in their fever-state, conjured up their own demons. How else to explain Hashim Amla shouldering arms to a delivery that hit the middle of middle stump? The batsman on both sides pushed and prodded as if the ball were a hand grenade that could explode at any moment. Ajinkya Rahane, for example, was out in the second innings playing from the crease with his hands about a foot ahead of his pads. Faf du Plessis treated the ball like a turtle treats a predator - by retreating into a shell. Twice he played for turn that wasn’t there, losing his offstump the first time and nicking to slip the second. Admittedly, the constant tumble of wickets was entertaining. Nothing bores viewers more than a flat track on which both sides make 500 and go home. But this was barely a contest between bat and ball. Aside from India’s Murali Vijay and Chesteshwar Pujara and South Africa’s AB de Villiers, it was all one-way traffic for the bowlers, and the spinners in particular. You have to go back to 1987 to find a Test in India in which the spinners took more wickets – 34 - than they did at Mohali. South Africa played three seamers (though Dale Steyn did not bowl in the second innings) but their spinners took 15 of the 20 Indian wickets to fall. Dean Elgar produced career best figures in the first innings; Simon Harmer had career best figures in the second. For India, R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja took eight wickets apiece, with Amit Mishra chipping in with three. Only Varun Aaron prevented the clean sweep. Kohli refused to blame the pitch. “I didn’t see one dismissal where the ball hit the glove or that there was square turn”. He went on to say that when India were bundled out in England, losing in three days, the team was criticised, not the wicket. So why should they blame the pitch now? He’s right. We shouldn’t be talking about the pitch. We should be talking about how neither side was able to cope with conditions, suggesting that batsmen these days aren’t equipped to play spin on tracks that offer the bowlers a little something, something. It’s not just this Test either. England’s collapse against Pakistan in their recently concluded third Test is another example of how the ability to bed down, soak up pressure and inch forward, rather than blasting through, is a rare commodity in today’s game. This is not to say the bowlers did not bowl well. They did. But as Jadeja said during the press conference, “ I didn’t have any major game plan against South Africa. If you see, they got out to straight balls. So I kept it simple” If Test cricket is to stay interesting, “wickets should be result-oriented”, Virat Kohli said at his post-match press conference. Again, he’s right. But getting a result is only one part of the equation. The quality of the sport on offer matters too. Otherwise, we’d be lining up to watch our neighbours play gully cricket. We watch international sport because we expect a level of excellence that is beyond the rest of us. I’m pretty sure I can leave the ball that hits middle stump as well as Amla did. India batted badly, bar Vijay and Pujara, but luckily for them South Africa batted much worse. India’s 2012-13 series brought us Kevin Pietersen’s 186, widely recognised as one of the great Test innings, and two hundreds and 562 runs from Alastair Cook. There was also Cheteshwar Pujara’s unbeaten 206 in the first Test and 135 in the second. While Australia were awful in India in 2013, Michael Clarke made 130 and 91 in the first two Tests, while MS Dhoni slammed a career best 224 in the first Test and Pujara made 204 in the second. The good news is that there is plenty of talent in both teams and the only way for the batting to go in the rest of the series is up.