Off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin picked up two wickets in the morning session before leg-spinner Amit Mishra removed the unsafe duo of Hashim Amla and Faf du Plesis after lunch as South Africa faltered in their attempt to chase down the victory target of 310 runs. The ball jumped off the pitch on a full length, and caught the edge of the bat to loop to Indian captain Virat Kohli at gully.
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The track of Nagpur stadium was assisting spinners from day 1 and it was the biggest reason behind the fallback of wickets so quickly.
Ashwin’s seven-wicket haul in the second innings took him to 12 for the match, and moved him above England’s Stuart Broad as the leading Test wicket-taker in 2015 with 55. In the one possible day in Bangalore, the first of that damp squib, he added four as South Africa were bowled out for 214.
Spin bowlers took 33 out of the 40 wickets to fall, and batsmen from both sides battled to get runs, with the highest score of the match being Indian opener Murali Vijay’s 40 in the first innings. So I don’t think we were as positive (as India). They key is to win Test matches as I have said this before. Whether we win or loss, we have to fight honourably and well done to guys. I suppose one kind of consolation would be that the conditions we’ve had to play in were probably nothing like we’ve had when we’ve played away from home, and that is a type of challenge we’ve never experienced before. There are a lot of people writing a lot of things about the pitch, “it should not be like this” or “it is turning too much”…people sitting somewhere else and speaking about the pitch in India. Kohli believed it was a challenging wicket.
“I think the Indian spinners have landed the ball more consistently than our spinners, and asked questions for a longer period of time”, South Africa coach Russell Domingo said. He got 5-32 in first innings and got 7-66 in second innings which is his best figures in test cricket.
“There hasn’t been a hundred in the series yet”, Amla said to the media at the post-match press conference.
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The fourth and final Test will be played at the Ferozeshah Kotla ground in New Delhi from December 3, with the hosts firm favourites to complete a 3-0 scoreline. And as bad as the pitch was for the batsmen, the South African batsman lacked application in their first innings and were often guilty of poor shot selection.
