1st Test Day 2 South Africa v India

Lunch South Africa 22 for 0 (Smith 11*, Petersen 11*) trail India 280 (Kohli 119, Philander 4-61) by 258 runs

Around midnight, Vernon Philander tweeted: "Toothache ... you are starting to annoy the **** out of me now." That aggravated a day on which he had bowled a touch too wide outside the off stump. He took out his frustration on India by ripping through the lower half as the final five wickets went down for the addition of only 25 runs.

Philander has never been a bowler who relies on prodigious movement, and on an overcast Thursday morning at the Wanderers, he shifted his line closer to off and had the batsmen guessing which direction the ball would move. As usual, his wickets were those that fast bowlers enjoy - nicks through to the keeper, a plumb lbw and then a ball that nipped enough to beat the bat and take the top of off.

 

India had begun the day continuing in yesterday's vein, shelving the big strokes and showing their patience. Just nine runs came in the first eight overs of the morning as Ajinkya Rahane and MS Dhoni hardly got anything loose. Still, they had survived a good part of an hour, the shine was going off the ball and South Africa would have to turn to their lesser bowlers at some point.

 

Instead, Morkel had Dhoni caught behind as he shifted his length fuller and kept it just outside off. Then Philander took over. The other set batsman, Rahane, was done in by a beauty in the next over, before Zaheer Khan gave another indication of how much his batting has fallen away by being plumb lbw on his first ball and Ishant Sharma lost his off bail to a ripper. R Ashwin had time to play a couple of his elegant strokes that makes people wonder why he bats as low as No. 8 before Morkel finished off the innings by getting Mohammed Shami bowled.

 

When South Africa batted, Zaheer had a few lbw shouts, but they were turned down as the ball regularly pitched outside leg. There were a few uppish strokes from Graeme Smith, one nearly carried to gully and another which flew past backward square leg. The biggest alarm though was when Smith inside-edged onto his right knee, causing serious pain and needing treatment from the physio. Smith soldiered on, though, and with Alviro Petersen striking a couple of stylish boundaries to take them to lunch at 22 without loss, South Africa had a near-perfect morning session.