Zeecric Bureau
Nagpur: Jacques Kallis and Hashim Amla waded South Africa through the troubled waters with a solid unbeaten partnership to take visitors to 90/2 at lunch on the first day of the first Test at Nagpur on Saturday.
A double strike by Zaheer Khan seemed to have pegged back South Africa on to the backfoot in the first half hour as India made a promising start.
Zaheer Khan first removed Ashwell Prince with a scorcher of a delivery, a bouncer directed at Prince’s face, which rattled the Proteas’ opener, forcing him to use bat as a shield. He ended up scooping a simple catch to behind the stumps to Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Relays however suggested that the ball had hit arm guard. Prince was out for a duck.
Captain Graeme Smith was the next to fall, cleaned bowled off a good length deliver.
He made just 6 runs after having won the toss and opted to take first strike.
Kallis and Amla then dug in, withered the early storm unleashed by pacers, before finally accelerating against spinners. Kallis notched up a fine half-century, neutralizing the early gains Khan had provided to India.
The ongoing Test rubber was being dubbed as the unofficial Test championship between world’s number one ranked team- India, and number 2 ranked team- South Africa; got underway at Nagpur.
VVS Laxman failed to recover in time for the match while Rohit Sharma injured himself in the morning practice session, paving way for Subramaniam Badrinath and Wridiman Saha to make their Test debuts.
Teams:
India:MS Dhoni*†, S Badrinath, G Gambhir, Harbhajan Singh, Z Khan, VVS Laxman, A Mishra, A Mithun, PP Ojha, WP Saha†, V Sehwag, I Sharma, RG Sharma, SR Tendulkar, S Tyagi, M Vijay
South Africa:GC Smith*, HM Amla, J Botha, MV Boucher†, AB de Villiers, JP Duminy, PL Harris, JH Kallis, R McLaren, M Morkel, WD Parnell, AN Petersen, AG Prince, DW Steyn, LL Tsotsobe
