Harris, Steyn inspire South Africa to innings win

South Africa completed a rather facile win over India in the first Test match at Nagpur by trouncing the hosts by an innings and six runs. India were 66/2 overnight and needed to scored another 259 runs to save the innings defeat, and despite batting much better than what they had in the first innings, they could not take the game into the fifth day.

Resuming from 66/2, the left-arm spinner Paul Harris thwarted the Indian batsmen by bowling a line outside the leg-stump. He seemed to have played perfectly well on the patience of the batsmen and got the number three batsman, Murali Vijay to play a sweep shot from the rough and into the hands of the fine-leg fielder.

S. Badrinath failed to repeat the first innings’ half century and was dismissed by Wayne Parnell, as India went into the lunch break at 162/4.

Sachin Tendulkar was on 77 at that stage, and he took his time but got to his century. At the other end, MS Dhoni did his bit in keeping up his end, as India slowly began to move out of the harm’s way. Unfortunately, Tendulkar completed his century but could not kick on too much, whereas Dhoni followed soon after to the same bowler; Harris.

With the two bigwigs gone, it was only a matter of time before the South Africans got going with their win. They were held up by the Saha and Harbhajan Singh to begin with and then by a fighting 33 by Zaheer Khan, but they couldn’t manage to make the South Africans bat again.

In the end, Steyn finished the tail with a couple of wickets to finish with ten wickets, as the South Africans went 1-0 up. Amla was declared the man of the match over Steyn for his magnificent unbeaten 253.