After opting to bowl, the spinners – R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, who picked up four wickets apiece – did extremely well to restrict South Africa to 214.
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Welcome to the LIVE updates of Day 2 of second Test between India and South Africa in Bengaluru.
As such, India trailed by only 134 runs, with Shikhar Dhawan going strong on 45, and Murali Vijay more sedate on 28 not out.
– De Villiers is South Africa’s third highest run-scorer in Tests behind Jacques Kallis and Graeme Smith. AB de Villiers, in what was his 100th Test match, robustly carried on while wickets tumbled at the other end far too regularly, eventually falling 15 short of a century. “Getting six wickets in a session is possible, and if we do get them, we are back into the game, but we need do a few disciplined bowling in the first session tomorrow”, he told reporters at stumps on Day One. “There were too many soft dismissals”.
De Villiers will be the seventh South African to play 100 Tests. India closed the day on 80-0.
He must have been looking to his three seamers to make inroads but it was the spinners who did the job, Ravi Ashwin and Ravendra Jadeja taking four each with only one falling to a spinner as there was also a run out.
Ashwin, meanwhile, trapped Stiaan van Zyl leg before off his second delivery, the opener guilty of playing down the wrong line.
The 27-year-old feels that there has been “no change in his mindset” from the time he first led the side in Adelaide to now but with the passage of time, he has learnt to assess his mistakes.
Stuart Binny, included in the side at Amit Mishra’s expense was not required to bowl more than the three overs of his first spell. The best way to watch the first Test match of the India vs. South Africa cricket tour online in the United States is through Willow TV, which is available via this YouTube link with a monthly subscription fee, as well as on Willow TV’s own site, accessible by clicking here.
Opener Dean Elgar, who plodded to 38 by lunch, was dismissed off the second ball after resumption when he dragged an attempted sweep off Jadeja onto his stumps.
India were relatively untroubled during their innings although Vijay did enjoy a life when he was put down by Imran Tahir at square leg off the bowling of Morkel.
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Philander has already returned to Cape Town after injuring his ankle during a warm-up game of football on Thursday, which could yet rule him out of the start of next month’s Test series against England.
