Day 1
India 231/7 (84 ov)
South Africa
Considering they were effectively operating with a three-man attack, South Africa did incredibly well to take seven wickets on a pitch that was better for batting than the one in Nagpur. However, the surface was not docile enough to afford India the luxury of facing an inept fourth bowler, and the lack of support for South Africa's frontline meant the batsmen could score freely when the first-choice bowlers were taken off or were tiring.
India ended the day on 231 for 7, the highest total of the series, but they might have struggled to make 200 had Imran Tahir not been in awful form. The two new bowlers in South Africa's XI, offspinner Dane Piedt and seamer Kyle Abbott, were incisive and displayed impressive stamina, taking four and three wickets apiece, and though Morne Morkel did not strike he offered control. Tahir, however, was bowled for only seven overs on the first day because he conceded 36 runs, serving up a buffet of full tosses and long-hops. The real damage to South Africa was in the overs Tahir could not bowl, because the rest were less threatening to face and easier to score off as they tired: Piedt bowled 34 overs, Morkel 17, and Abbott 17 for only 23 runs.
The only Indian batsman good enough to battle through the hard periods and cash in on the good times was Ajinkya Rahane, who achieved his maiden half-century in India in his seventh innings and was approaching a fifth Test hundred, when bad light ended play six overs before stumps. His brisk partnership of 70 with Virat Kohli steadied India after a top-order wobble, and his rear-guard stands with Ravindra Jadeja and R Ashwin ensured India survived the day. A first-innings total of 250 will prove challenging on this surface, especially if a team has four reliable bowlers to defend it.
Batting was difficult in the morning, when the ball was new and there was some moisture in the pitch, but Shikhar Dhawan managed to anchor India through the first session for the loss of only one wicket. He took 18 balls to score his first run. India scored only 6 in the first 30 minutes, and 16 in the first hour.
Abbott had figures of 8-3-11-0 in his first spell; the variable bounce made facing him trickier. One good-length ball to Dhawan passed the off stump a little above the knee. Another short-of-a-length delivery climbed on M Vijay and was collected by wicketkeeper Dane Vilas at head height, but the ball immediately after kept low, forcing a crouching defence from the batsman. Vijay was later smashed on the right elbow by one that rose from a length, and wrung his hand in pain.
Abbott had Vijay caught at slip in the 12th over but he had over-stepped, his foot erring by the smallest of margins. Vijay scored only two more runs, though, before he nicked a delivery from Piedt that drifted away from him but did not spin, to Hashim Amla at first slip.
In the third over after lunch, Piedt broke Dhawan's resistance with a classic one-two combo. The first ball drew Dhawan forward and spun away from the left-hander from around the wicket, passing the outside edge. The next delivery slid on with the arm, beating Dhawan's inside edge as he played for the turn, trapping him lbw. Abbott then found the gap between Pujara's bat and pad, the delivery angling in to uproot off stump after grazing the inside edge. India had gone from 60 for 1 to 66 for 3.
In the middle period of the second session, however, Rahane and Kohli batted superbly, putting away loose deliveries and taking frequent singles to ensure pressure did not build. Their 50-run partnership came off 67 deliveries and they looked set to cash in on South Africa's weak support bowlers, when Kohli suffered a freak dismissal.
Kohli slog-swept Piedt, making clean contact. Instead of racing to the boundary, though, the ball thudded into the thigh of the fielder at short leg and lobbed back up towards the pitch. The wicketkeeper Dane Vilas reacted quickly and dived forward, taking the catch at full length and ensuring that Temba Bavuma, who was hopping about in pain, had something to celebrate.
That wicket resulted in two more in quick time. Rohit Sharma was dropped at slip by Amla off Abbott on 0, but two balls later he tried to slog Piedt over deep midwicket, and got a leading edge to Tahir at long-on. Abbott then bowled Saha off the inside edge in the final over before tea, reducing India to 139 for 6. Rahane went into the break on 31 off 62 balls, having scored only one run off the 20 balls he faced since Kohli's dismissal.
India's best session was the one after tea, during which they scored 92 runs for the loss of Ravindra Jadeja. Rahane and Jadeja added 59 for the seventh wicket, and scored freely against a tiring Piedt. Rahane slog-swept and pulled the offspinner for a six and a four in one over to pass 50, while Jadeja punished loose deliveries from Tahir and Duminy.
South Africa had two moments of misfortune, too, after Jadeja was caught deftly by Dean Elgar at midwicket for 24. Ashwin was given not out when Piedt appealed for a bat-pad catch though the ball had brushed his glove, and then Rahane, on 78, was dropped by Amla at slip, capping a frustrating day in the field for the South African captain. Both those moments deprived Piedt of a fifth wicket, and allowed India to end the day in a far better position than they should have been.
Day 2
South Africa 121
India 334
South Africa followed defeat on a spin-friendly Mohali pitch with a batting failure on a normal Indian pitch in Bangalore. The pattern has repeated itself: Nagpur was treacherous to batsmen, Delhi offered close to 50-50 balance between bat and ball, but there was no change in South Africa's batting fortunes.
Responding to India's 334, they were bowled out for 121, 14 short of the follow-on mark. Play was called off for bad light soon after South Africa lost their final wicket, but only after India had confirmed they weren't going to make the visitors bat again.
The state of the match reflected how well India bowled as a unit, but also how poorly South Africa played. There was surely a psychological element to it, amply displayed in the dismissal of Faf du Plessis, who has had a horror tour. In Bangalore, he was out jumping down the pitch, premeditatedly, to the third ball he faced. Here, he attempted a lap-sweep off the second ball he faced and only managed to spoon the ball into the leg-slip region. Ajinkya Rahane had enough time to sprint across from slip and complete the catch. Whatever the conditions are, it must be hard to bat normally when you are an out-of-form batsman on the losing side at the tail-end of a long tour.
At tea, South Africa had been in a fairly decent position, 38 for 1. But they crumbled, as touring sides in India often do, in the final session, losing nine wickets for 83 runs. Most of the wickets were the result of poor footwork or judgment of length. Temba Bavuma and Hashim Amla were out cutting deliveries from Ravindra Jadeja that weren't short enough. JP Duminy and Dane Vilas were bowled by reverse-swinging deliveries with feet pinned to the crease.
But those two wickets - Umesh Yadav straightening one past Duminy's outside edge and Ishant Sharma bending one in between Vilas' bat and pad - also had a lot to do with the perfect length India's seamers bowled, and their ability to generate early reverse. As early as the 15th over, in fact, when Umesh broke South Africa's biggest opening stand of the series - 36 - by swinging one away from Dean Elgar to find the left-hander's outside edge from around the wicket.
The seamers took a little time finding their rhythm, with Ishant slanting the ball too wide to make Elgar play early on and Umesh drifting onto the openers' pads a couple of times in his first spell, but once they did, they were pinpoint accurate, attacking the stumps relentlessly.
R Ashwin bowled as he has right through the series, even if he didn't make the key breakthroughs for once. Jadeja used the crease and mixed up his release points - his arm slightly higher for one ball, more round-arm for the next - to keep the batsmen guessing in conditions that weren't too difficult as long as you looked to play straight.
Of all the South African batsmen, only AB de Villiers followed this maxim. While the rest fell around him, he just batted normally. But the situation prompted him to take a few risks, and Ishant's judgment on the boundary rope was spot-on. De Villiers came down the track and looked to hit Jadeja over long-off. The bat spun in his hand so the ball landed in Ishant's rather than beyond him and over the rope. Just like that, Jadeja had his fourth five-wicket haul in Tests.
The pace and tenor of South Africa's innings was in stark contrast to India's in the morning, when Ajinkya Rahane made the first century of the series, played its longest innings, and put on, with Ashwin, its highest partnership, of 98. Eventually, India stretched their total to 334 before Kyle Abbott ended their innings in the fifth over after lunch.
Abbott, who had pounded in, attacked the stumps, and been relentlessly accurate all through the innings, finished with figures of 5 for 40 in 24.5 overs.
South Africa took the second new ball at the start of play, in the 85th over of India's innings. There was less movement for Morne Morkel and Abbott than there had been with the first new ball, and definitely less inconsistent bounce. A few stopped on the batsmen, but there was not much else to worry about from the surface. South Africa could have struck early nonetheless, when Ashwin nicked Abbott to slip, only for Hashim Amla put down his third catch of the game. It was a harder chance than the first two, the ball dying on him and giving the umpires cause to think he may have grabbed it just before it hit the turf, but replays confirmed he had spilled it and picked it up again on the half-volley.
That apart, South Africa struggled to break the partnership. Ashwin, who had made a cautious start on the first afternoon, grew in confidence, and began timing his flicks and back-foot punches off the seamers. India reached their 250 in the ninth over of the morning, and Rahane, who began the day on 89, reached his hundred in the next over, getting there with a cracking boundary, a punch down the ground off Abbott.
The spinners came on after that, and Rahane went after them, skipping nimbly down the track to hit two sixes in three balls off Dane Piedt - one over cow corner, the other over long-off. He used his feet to Dean Elgar as well, lifting him for a clean, one-bounce four over extra cover, and was looking unstoppable when he failed to get the desired elevation with another lofted drive and picked out the cover fielder off Imran Tahir.
It was Tahir's first wicket, in only his tenth over. It was the 105th over of the Indian innings, reflecting both how erratic Tahir had been and how little faith Amla had shown in him to turn his performance around.
The wicket didn't stall India's progress. On the contrary, Ashwin grew more aggressive, farming the strike and playing his shots at every opportunity. In the eight overs between Rahane's dismissal and lunch, he struck three fours and a straight six off Tahir that brought up his half-century.
Day 3
India 334 & 190/4 (81 ov)
South Africa 121
India lead by 403 runs
An unbroken 133-run partnership between Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane - the first century stand of the series - deflated South Africa after Morne Morkel had given them a sliver of hope with three early top-order wickets. India were 57 for 4 when Rahane joined Kohli early in the post-lunch session. They were still in command, their lead a healthy 270, but South Africa were eyeing the possibility of having less than 400 to chase. When bad light brought day three to a close with nine overs still to be bowled, Kohli and Rahane were still unbeaten, on 83 and 52 respectively, India's lead now a mighty 403.
Morkel took wickets off successive deliveries in the first session to leave India 8 for 2, yorked Shikhar Dhawan soon after lunch, and continued to threaten with pace and reverse-swing to end the day with figures of 3 for 29 from 17 overs. The rest of the attack did their job too, but their efforts seemed to have a tinge of futility to them, thanks to the disappointing performance of their batsmen on the second day. Getting bowled out for 121 and conceding a 213-run first-innings lead was always going to leave South Africa chasing the game.
Still, India had to fight hard. Dhawan had batted as cautiously as he had done in the first innings, leaving resolutely outside off stump, had taken a couple of blows, off awkwardly bouncing deliveries from Kyle Abbott and Imran Tahir, and had moved to 21 off 85 when Morkel speared a full, fast ball under his bat from around the wicket.
Cheteshwar Pujara, who had mirrored Dhawan's struggle at the other end, fell three overs later, bowled for the third time in successive innings. This time it was Tahir who rattled his stumps with a flatter, quicker legbreak that left Pujara going back rather than forward, playing the trajectory rather than the length. India were now 57 for 4.
Kohli and Rahane had looked the most assured batsmen in India's first innings, and they continued to bat fluently, timing their shots better than the top order had done. But South Africa's bowlers still made them work hard for their runs. Though their partnership run-rate of 2.66 was significantly better than the 1.97 achieved by the previous-highest stand in the innings, between Dhawan and Pujara, it was still slow going by their standards.
Even Tahir, erratic all through the tour, found his rhythm, bowling with accuracy and keeping the batsmen guessing with his variations. A big-spinning legbreak to Kohli seemed to have given him his second wicket when umpire Bruce Oxenford upheld the South Africans' caught-behind appeal, but a check for no-ball showed Tahir's heel to have landed marginally, but decisively, beyond the crease. Further replays also suggested Kohli hadn't edged the ball. Kohli survived, but might still face censure from the match referee for his reaction to the initial decision: he refused to walk off for a few seconds, glaring at the umpire and muttering under his breath.
M Vijay too might have gone into the match referee's notebook, when Kumar Dharmasena gave him out caught behind off Morkel. That wicket, in the fifth over of India's innings, came off a snorter of a bouncer, angling into the batsman and forcing him to lift his gloves and bat instinctively to shield his face. Given out, Vijay's first reaction was to point at his arm guard. He was right that the ball had struck him there, and therefore unlucky to be given out, but gesturing to the umpire was an ill-advised step.
That was the last ball of Morkel's third over. First ball of his fourth was pitched at a near-perfect spot, on an off-stump line and the fuller side of a good length, and it straightened to hit the top of off stump after beating the outside edge of India's No. 3. It was Rohit Sharma, rather than Cheteshwar Pujara, who occupied this slot.
Initially it seemed that the promotion came about because Pujara had suffered a bruised hand while fielding at short leg on day two, but then it seemed it might have been tactical, when Pujara walked out at No. 4. Either way, it ended a horrendous Test with the bat for Rohit - he holed out to long-on for 1 in the first innings, and followed that with a golden duck in the second.
Rahane had a couple of nervy moments against the spinners, preferring to play them off the back foot, as he had done in the first innings, but not playing as steadfastly straight. Looking to pull Tahir, low bounce forced him to bottom-edge the ball into the flap of his pad and balloon in the air. Only Rahane's own physical presence prevented Dane Vilas from diving forward from behind the stumps and completing the catch. A few overs later, sharp turn from Piedt made Rahane jam his bat down awkwardly and squeeze the ball into the on side, after initially looking to cut him against the turn.
But it was Morkel who continued to pose the most problems. Coming back for his third spell, he reversed a 45-over-old ball away from Rahane to produce a massive caught-behind appeal. It was turned down, rightly so, with replays showing the ball missing his outside edge and flicking his back pad. In his next over, he bent the ball into Rahane twice, and the batsman left the ball on both occasions. The first one narrowly missed the top of off stump, the second hit Rahane's front pad, height preventing another full-throated appeal from being upheld.
By tea, though, both Kohli and Rahane had settled in and were batting with a fair degree of comfort. Barring an inside-edge from Rahane off Abbott that narrowly missed leg stump, South Africa didn't pose too many problems to the pair in the middle.
Kohli scored at a fairly good clip, though not with his usual array of leg-side whips and cover drives; with the pitch throwing up occasionally uncertain bounce, he played later than he often does, letting the ball come on and picking up a number of boundaries with controlled dabs to the third-man region. Rahane was more sedate, scoring 9 runs off the first 42 balls he faced in the session before changing gears with a powerfully swept four off Tahir.
Starting with that shot, Rahane picked up three fours in five overs, and soon reached his half-century, completing an emphatic turnaround in form. Having started the series with scores of 15, 2, 13 and 9, he was ending it with a century and a fifty in the same match.
Day 4
India 334 & 267/5d
South Africa 121 & 72/2 (target 481)
South Africa require another 409 runs with 8 wickets remaining
In their final innings of a long and wretched series, South Africa's batsmen produced their most unyielding display, responding with dour defence in the face of a mountainous fourth-innings task. Hashim Amla was at the forefront of their defiance, playing the slowest innings of 200 balls or more in the history of Test cricket*, but South Africa's job, notwithstanding their captain's monumental effort, was less than half done.
India declared half an hour from lunch, after Ajinkya Rahane had become the fifth Indian batsman to score twin tons in a Test match, setting a target of 481 with just over five sessions remaining. At stumps on day four, South Africa had only lost two wickets while eating up 72 overs. They only scored 72 in that time, but it hardly mattered to them: South Africa were batting time, and runs were simply not on their minds.
At stumps, Amla was batting on 23 off 207 balls and with him was AB de Villiers, on 11 off 91. Their third-wicket partnership was worth 23 off 29.2 overs. Before that, Amla and Temba Bavuma had put on 44 in 38.4 overs.
South Africa began their fourth innings with a possible 158 overs remaining in the match. Given the sheer amount of time left, a draw seemed out of question, but South Africa have shown themselves capable - in Adelaide three years ago and in Colombo last year - of defying that sort of logic. South Africa's batting has been far from its best during this series, but they kept faith in their ability - unique in this era - to bat long without thinking of runs.
They had five overs to see out before lunch, and did not survive that period unscathed. R Ashwin looped one up to Dean Elgar from around the wicket, drifting it into the left-hander and getting it to leave him from a middle-stump line. Elgar didn't reach the pitch while trying to drive straight, and Rahane took a comfortable catch at slip.
In walked Amla. It took him 46 balls to get off the mark, and the first runs were unintentional, his back-foot defensive stroke off Ravindra Jadeja squirting away into the fine leg region. Bavuma, blocking with comparable single-mindedness at the other end was on 8 off 50 balls when Ashwin sent down a rare half-tracker - possibly slipped in deliberately to break the batsman's rhythm - that left him with almost no option but to pull for six.
The overs ran by quickly, hypnotically, and the close-in cordon grew in strength. It was fascinating to watch. South Africa, perhaps, were making things more difficult for themselves by contributing to India's rapid over rate and leaving themselves more overs to face. When their innings began, 68 overs remained from the 90 scheduled for the day; India bowled 72.
And while neither batsman was making too many mistakes - their control percentages hovered in the low-to-mid-90s - every little mistake was amplified by the presence of four, sometimes five, fielders around the bat at all times.
Between lunch and tea, the edges weren't finding fielders though. Amla came forward to defend Jadeja, and nicked him between first and second slip. Ishant Sharma, replacing Ashwin in the 28th over, found Bavuma's edge twice in the second over of his spell, and the ball streaked through the slips on both occasions.
By tea, India had bowled 22 maidens in 39 overs, and had only one wicket to show for it. It took a ball of great beauty from their best bowler, Ashwin, to finally break the stand in the fourth over of the final session. It drifted away slightly from Bavuma's off stump, and hit it as he played for more turn than there was. The length was key, punishing the batsman for his lack of a front-foot stride.
The pitch seemed to have slowed down slightly, but the batsmen were still being tested, forced to stay vigilant every ball. Ashwin continued to confound with his flight, and slipped in the odd legbreak for variety. Jadeja got a couple to turn sharply past de Villiers' edge. Umesh Yadav got one to lift from a length and smack Amla's left glove. It was, perhaps, the moment that best summed up Amla's impregnability: his hands were as close to his body as possible, and they cushioned the impact of the ball to make it drop right next to his feet.
Amla and de Villiers had been at the crease for 62 balls without scoring a run, when Kohli decided to shake things up by bringing on his part-timers. Shikhar Dhawan sent down two wide full-tosses in his first over, and Amla had no option but to smash them to the cover-point boundary, but in between he got one to spit up from a length. Amla was fully stretched out in defence, his head over the ball and his bat face almost parallel with the ground, when the ball popped up off his glove and over Cheteshwar Pujara at silly point. Pujara spun around and dived full-length, but could only get his fingertips to the ball. It was barely a half-chance, but also the only chance India would get during the partnership.
In the morning, Rahane shifted gears effortlessly as India resumed 403 ahead, looking for quick runs. On day three, he had scored 52 off 152 balls, shutting South Africa out of the contest in a display of cool professionalism in the company of Virat Kohli. On the fourth morning, Rahane made 48 off 54 balls.
The only major change in his batting was a willingness to go after anything remotely wide of the stumps. He picked up two fours and a six in the first four overs of the morning, all in the arc between third man and deep cover, the pick of them a perfectly timed ramp over the slips off Morne Morkel.
Kohli, who began the day on 83, only added five to his overnight score before he was lbw to a ball from Kyle Abbott that crept through at shin height. It didn't hamper India's scoring rate as Rahane and Wriddhiman Saha kept playing their shots. Rahane raced through the 80s with sixes in successive overs off Imran Tahir and Dean Elgar, and Saha used his bottom hand to telling effect in swiping three fours in two overs.
The declaration was just around the corner. Tahir bowled one full at Rahane's pads, and he clipped it away through the leg side to bring up a hundred that he barely celebrated, raising his arms momentarily before walking off towards the dressing room. It was an understated reaction to an outstanding achievement. Among Indian batsmen, only Vijay Hazare, Sunil Gavaskar (three times), Rahul Dravid (twice) and Kohli had made hundreds in both innings of a Test match before Rahane.
Day 5
India 334 & 267/5d
South Africa 121 & 143 (143.1 ov, target 481)
India won by 337 runs
The scorecard will say South Africa were bowled out for 143, another low score in series where they only passed 200 once in seven attempts. It will say India won by 337 runs to complete a 3-0 series win. But for anyone who didn't witness the Delhi Test, it will take a closer reading to appreciate the extent of South Africa's fourth-innings defiance and India's struggle to bowl them out. Between them, India's four specialist bowlers sent down 136.1 overs, bowled 87 maidens against a set of batsmen who had made up their minds to block everything.
In the end, South Africa simply had too much to do. AB de Villiers played out 297 balls, Hashim Amla 244, and Temba Bavuma and Faf du Plessis ate up a fair share of deliveries in a concerted effort of stonewalling. But to do so for more than five sessions was simply too much of an ask on a slow Feroz Shah Kotla surface that began deteriorating halfway through the final day.
Having lost only five wickets in 138 overs until tea on day five, South Africa lost their last five wickets in the space of 27 balls. Umesh Yadav, bowling fast and reversing the ball appreciably, bowled Dane Vilas and Kyle Abbott, and had Dane Piedt caught behind by Wriddhiman Saha diving in front of first slip. But the big wicket was that of de Villiers, who had been at the crease since early in the final session of day four. Having defended resolutely and taken a series of painful blows on the glove, he wasn't able to keep out an R Ashwin offbreak that spat at him from a good length. The ball popped off that much-battered glove and settled in leg slip's hands.
It was only fitting that Ashwin, the best bowler on either side right through the series, ended the match with another five-for, bowling Morne Morkel as he shouldered arms to a ball that drifted into him through the air and spun less than expected. He ended the series with 31 wickets and his fifth Man-of-the-Series award.
Till his dismissal, de Villiers had been a picture of calm at the crease, his footwork precise but not extravagant, moving him into compact positions from where he watched the ball closely and defended at the last possible moment. He was not getting as close to the pitch of the ball as Amla had consistently done, and there were more edges as a result. However, his hands were impeccably soft, and the ball died a painless death a short distance from the bat and well away from the close-in fielders.
If anything, his approach possibly made the pitch look better to bat on than it actually was. A number of deliveries misbehaved in one way or another over the course of the day, but De Villiers minimised their danger by playing almost impossibly late, and refusing entirely to go hard at the ball.
The one bowler who consistently worried him was Umesh Yadav. In two overs close to the lunch break, he got the ball to rear at de Villiers three times. Twice he knocked his bat out of his hands, smacking his top glove once and his bottom glove on the other occasion. When he came back into the attack late in the second session, he hit his glove with another lifter, either side of balls that jagged in, kept low, and struck him on the unprotected part of the knee.
India had a 72-over-old ball at the start of the day, and the first eight overs were shared among the two seamers - who tried, with little success, to unsettle Amla and de Villiers from around the wicket - the occasional leg-rollers of Virat Kohli, and the never-before-seen legbreaks of Cheteshwar Pujara. India were waiting to bring their spinners on when the second new ball was available. With the pitch slowing down considerably, they were banking on getting some life out of it with a harder ball with a prominent seam.
Jadeja produced the wicket-taking ball in his third over, drawing Amla forward with flight, and getting the ball to drift into him and spin away sharply. For once, Amla's front-foot stride was short and insufficient to get close to the pitch of the ball, which beat his outside edge and clipped the outside of his off stump.
An air of expectation hung around the middle during the course of Jadeja's next few overs, with the allrounder producing a loud lbw shout by beating du Plessis with a slider and then producing an edge that fell just short of slip.
Eventually, du Plessis settled down, proving himself a worthy recipient of South Africa's blocking baton. Amla had taken 46 balls to get off the mark, and de Villiers 33. Du Plessis bested both of them, taking 53 balls to get his first run, a pushed single into the covers off an Ashwin full toss.
By then, Ashwin had tried everything - a fuller length to try and exploit footmarks outside the off stump, only to be stymied by the South Africans' refusal to drive, legbreaks and carrom balls, and a switch to around the wicket.
At the other end, Jadeja produced an unceasingly metronomic performance. He kept wheeling in, kept attacking the stumps, and the batsmen kept defending stubbornly. His figures at the start of the day were 23-16-10-0. At lunch, they were 35-28-10-1.
Having last conceded a run in his 19th over, bowled during the final session of day four, Jadeja threatened Bapu Nadkarni's 51-year-old record of 21 successive maidens until he sent down a short ball in his 37th; it sat up off the pitch, so slow it almost demanded that du Plessis punch it through the vacant mid-on region.
By that time, though, the pitch was beginning to show increasing signs of wear. Turn and bounce from Ashwin produced an appeal for a slip catch off de Villiers in the 117th over, but the ball had lobbed off pad, not bat. In his next over, Ashwin spun one from wide outside off and across the stumps; de Villiers' pad was in the way but the ball was clearly missing the stumps.
Jadeja then ripped one past du Plessis' outside edge. Perhaps this prompted his front pad to move a little further across in defence than normal, when Jadeja produced a delivery of similar line and length later in the over. It slid on with the arm, though, and struck that pad low, right in front of the stumps. For the second time in the day, Jadeja had been the irresistible force to dislodge an immovable South African.
JP Duminy was the new man in. For the first time since the fourth over of South Africa's innings, when he had dismissed Dean Elgar, Ashwin bowled at a left-hander. There was a tangible edginess to Duminy's footwork while he faced Ashwin; he moved a fair distance sideways, but barely an inch forward or back.
He shuffled all the way across his stumps twice in a row to balls bowled from around the wicket. The first slid on with the angle, past leg stump. The second one straightened just enough to hit Duminy's front pad as he looked to play around it. All of the Feroz Shah Kotla appealed, and Bruce Oxenford slowly raised his finger. He was struck in line with the stumps, but it was a tight call on whether it straightened enough to hit the stumps; it would have probably hit some part of leg stump.
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