India take unassailable lead in Test Series as South Africa lose at Nagpur

South Africa’s batting woes continued against spin

India defeated South Africa by 124 runs in the third test at Nagpur to seal the Freedom Series. After nine years, South Africa has lost an away series. Also, Virat Kohli has won his first Test series in India as captain.

Picking up from where they had left on Day 2, Dean Elgar and Hashim Amla tried to build up the South African innings. An early breakthrough came for India as Ravichandran Ashwin bagged Elgar’s wicket. AB de Villiers came out to bat and as his recent form has been, it won’t be wrong to say the Proteas were depending on him. However, ABD couldn’t also stick it out in front of Ashwin’s spin attack. He managed to score only nine runs.

Du Plessis and Amla were going well before the latter fell to Amit Mishra. These two players were involved in a 70-run partnership. Soon Mishra struck again and this time picked Du Plessis’ wicket.

JP Duminy and Dane Vilas tried to defend for a while but India’s spin attack got to them once again as Ashwin bagged Duminy’s wicket. In the same over the spinner picked Vilas’s wicket. In the 88th over, K Rabada fell to Ashwin’s delivery. The 29-year-old took M Morkel’s wicket to give India a 124-run victory in the match.

As expected on this pitch, Indian spinners have been hugely successful, bagging all 20 wickets. Ashwin has picked up 12 wickets in this match, seven in this innings while Jadeja and Mishra have 4 wickets each.

South Africa’s batting failure continued as they failed to cross the hundred runs’ mark in the first innings. The visiting team’s batsmen could not put up a good show in the second innings either as none of them managed to cross the 40 runs’ mark.

Brief Scores:

SA’s 79 and 185 (Hashim Amla 39, Faf du Plessis 39; Ashwin 5/32, Jadeja 4/33) lose to India’s 215 and 173 by 124 runs