India beat South Africa in a test series for the first time in 11 years by winning the third test by 124 runs thanks to Ravichandran Ashwin’s 12-wicket match haul on Friday.
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In the morning, chasing the formidable victory target of 310 set by the hosts last evening to stay alive in the series, the visitors slumped to 58 for four, losing two second innings wickets this morning to the two conceded yesterday, before showing some fight to take the visitors to lunch at 105 for 4.
Ravi Ashwin was the chief destroyer for India taking 5/32 in the first innings and career best innings figures of 7/66 in the second, as he made it near impossible for the Proteas to have any chance of securing a result from the match.
India won the third test match against South Africa of the Paytm Freedom series and won the series by 2-0 in 4 test match series with one match to go.
The winning sequence was broken only by the drawn rain-hit Bangalore Test.
This is South Africa’ first away series defeat in 15 tours.
The fourth and final Test will be played at New Delhi’s Ferozeshah Kotla stadium from December 3.
Nagpur, Nov.27: Test captain Virat Kohli described Ravichandran Ashwin as a “champion bowler” and said that the off-spinner’s consistency is one of the prime reasons behind India’s back-to-back series wins.
In the end, South Africa was sent packing for 185, which meant they are yet to touch the 200 mark in the series, which included the embarrassing 79 out in the first innings at Nagpur. Ashwin, 29, started the series with a bang, claiming eight wickets in Mohali, while becoming the quickest Indian bowler to the 150-mark. At the moment our team is similar to that, we’re breeding a few younger guys coming in. Mishra showed great character in that period.
I would have been very upset as a batsman if I had to play all my home matches on pitches like that.
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“(There are) people sitting in other countries and speaking about pitches in India”, a livid Kohli said at the post match media conference. 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. We prised out the wickets of Amla and Faf. Both of them added 72 runs in around 48 overs before Mishra bagged their wickets in two of his successive overs. He also accounted for du Plessis, who went for a pull shot but was bowled as the ball kept low. A lot depends on Amla, AB de Villiers, Faf du Plessis and JP Duminy.
