South Africa thrashed, smashed, raped, gored, mutilated, annihilated (please add in your adjectives in the comments ) India in the second test. Hats off to South Africa for playing an absolutely flawless brand of cricket. When the first test match in Chennai ended in a dull draw it was obvious that South Africa clearly looked the better team between the two. Both teams are equally matched but South Africa was putting in the effort.

Before the series, Kallis had declared that the world’s perception on South Africa’s inability to play good spin bowling was a myth. I had to smile at that statement because we had all heard that before and the results were always the same even the last time they came around in India. However, watching the ease and sure-footed ways in which they went about playing spin, I must say they have truly come a long way. It was a superb display of batting.

Gone are the days where most of the South African batsmen would look to stick out their pads to negate the spin or indulge almost everything in their premeditated sweep shots as the only way to play spin. The irony in this match was watching Ganguly, arguably one of the better players of spin in the Indian side, sticking out his pads and not being clear of which way to move his feet… and the bowler is Paul Harris who is the least impressive one among his mates and is a Yuvraj singh equivalent as a spinner.

For the Indian batters, there is no point jumping the gun and going on a witch-hunt with salad forks and spoons. It was one bad match where they played disastrously and the law of averages had to catch up some time.

However I cannot say the same about their bowling which looked flat and totally disinterested, which brings us to the point of limping Indians. Before the series began the Glouster report had an amazing list of the entire team being deep red in niggles and injury concerns which required for most of them, at least 6 months of rest.

During the Australian series, Sachin carried a groin strain and interestingly, there were media reports that he will not be fit for the SA series and at the same time, the Glouster report came out. Sachin promptly declared himself fit and so did R.P Singh. Sachin gets the same injury back again and is ruled out for the series and R.P. Singh was seen bowling gingerly without wanting to bend his back and go flat out.

Clearly, I get the impression out of all of this that some of these Indian team players are way too greedy to play! If somebody is only half-fit or 80 percent fit, you don’t play them in a test match. Right now, India is fielding a team who are more like patched up pirates.

It was disappointing to hear reports on the Indian captain and team being unhappy about the grass on the pitch. I thought that was pathetic to whine on that. Recently, I saw Kumble clarifying that he did not have problems with the pitch at all. I hope so, because I felt at the point that the match was already lost, when you walk into the field, having a grouse on the type of pitch offered.

Apart from the batting collapses, the key difference between India and South Africa has been their fast bowlers. The sole reason why India had climbed up the rankings has been because their fast bowlers had joined the party and assisted Kumble, India’s only match winning bowler for almost a decade now! So if they are going to have a situation where on looking at a placid docile pitch, the fast bowlers give up before bowling a ball and run-in to simply roll their arms, remove the shine and collect their match fees, India is only going backwards to the days where a test match can only be possibly won if notably Kumble or sometimes Harbhajan does something special.

In contrast, on a flat lifeless Chennai pitch, in spite of the raging Sehwag thrashing them all over, the South African bowlers of Steyn, Ntini, Morkel, kept on coming in hard at them. Hardwork and effort paid well for them. Steyn has been impressive… he looks like an ordinary bowler, sprays it around and then comes an amazing spell bursting with beautiful deliveries. I liked what I saw of Morkel too but he has to learn the art of reverse swing which he currently cannot do. The old fox Ntini who is such a lovable cricketer, stills bites!

For the third test, Ishanth is back and hopefully fully recovered and not patched up. I would be happy irrespective of the results that the Indian fast bowlers bowl hard.

I can’t see India beating South Africa in the next test, as South Africa looks strong and good enough to save the match in a worse case scenario. Hopefully, there will be something special from the Indian camp from what otherwise is a series totally dominated by South Africa, save those few magical sessions of that mammoth Sehwag triple hundred.