India vs South Africa today Live Score, Full Scorecard, and Updates

Very exciting. you want to be a part of those types of games and obviously be on the right side of the result. I think we tried to hold our ground as much as we could. We knew it was going to be tough with the bat, it was tough for us, but we needed to exploit what was there. I think we guys did that beautifully. Fortunately things have worked out quite well. ,Our bowlers got us back into the game, but that partnership with Bosch, I think a little bit with Marco as well, at the end of the day, just gave a little bit of impetus that we could play a little bit better this morning. It wasn't as extreme, but we were able to get a partnership. We tried to stay in the game as much as we could. It's not every time that you score 120-125 and you feel that that's a winning score. It was just a case of staying in the game and to keep believing. You're as good as your players really. Some of the bad stats, I give it to the players. From a batting point of view, I'm just comfortable with myself, with my technique, not to worry about triggering and all those type of things. I have a decent understanding of the game. I've come here to India wanting to do well. I don't have the greatest of records when it comes to these conditions. So it's a bit of that exuberance on my side to see myself learning these conditions and implement all the little things that I'm trying and keep contributing for the team. Opening up the leg a little bit (helped in the second innings). It was just an awareness the way I played it. Fortunately, I have played a few innings, so I understand a little bit of adjustments that you need to make. And luck, we all need luck. We didn't have KG today. He's our leader of the team. Obviously, in these conditions, we have Simon, we have Kesh, and they are becoming a formidable partnership. So I think that bowling attack of ours is definitely boosted by those two. (On the catch to dismiss Axar) It wasn't easy. I'm just glad I got a hand to it. Crucial moment again. Axar, he had momentum on his side and we kind of know how the Indian batters play. When they have momentum, they go even harder. So fortunately, he was able to make a mistake. I was able to grab him with my small hands. Those are those moments that you want to be a part of. You don't want to give it to someone else. You want to be doing it for the team.

I felt a little bit of nerves. It's hard to catch your breath with that sun setting, tried to be clear on my plans. Yeah, luckily I got the reward and a brilliant catch by Temba (on being first smashed by Axar and then taking his wicket). He was phenomenal (on Simon Harmer). He showed why he's got 1,000 first-half wickets. It's a privilege to bowl alongside him. It's been a brilliant feeling. There was a real hunger and desire to cross over the line. Very much so (on if the win in Pakistan set them up well for this tour). I think we take a lot of confidence, but we know the task at hand here in India. It's a different ball game when you come here. The guys are highly skilled, conditions are very different, but, you know, for our team to come a long way and tick the first box of this tour has been a phenomenal effort. I think we know there's always a ball with your name on it, so consistency is key, and Simon showed it a lot better than I did in this Test, but also the fact that Temba showed us and gave us the field sets to allow us to ball the way we wanted to, one must give a lot of credit to him as well. Like I said, it's probably the one assignment that we hadn't ticked from a box perspective ( a Test win in India), but, you know, it's our first leg forward, we can be really, really, really proud of what we've achieved today.

“Basically, it’s the harder ball game. When the ball is nice and hard, maybe the deviation would be a little quicker. As and when the ball became softer, the deviation lessens and your accuracy comes into play. So, when I bowled the first over, everything happened, the ball swung, it stayed low, it went high. It is very difficult to understand what is the right length so you keep bowling and you keep figuring things out. So that was my reading initially. The first 3-4 balls, everything happened: the ball kicked, one ball went low. Where do you bowl? Then you see this is the way it’s shaping. As and when the ball became softer, it did settle down, the variation was not consistent so then we realized that yes, when the ball is nice and hard, the seam is pronounced, it will do a little more and as and when the ball becomes softer, it’ll become slightly easy,” the 31-year-old seamer said to reporters after the end of day’s play in Kolkata.

“Basically, it’s the harder ball game. When the ball is nice and hard, maybe the deviation would be a little quicker. As and when the ball became softer, the deviation lessens and your accuracy comes into play. So, when I bowled the first over, everything happened, the ball swung, it stayed low, it went high. It is very difficult to understand what is the right length so you keep bowling and you keep figuring things out. So that was my reading initially. The first 3-4 balls, everything happened: the ball kicked, one ball went low. Where do you bowl? Then you see this is the way it’s shaping. As and when the ball became softer, it did settle down, the variation was not consistent so then we realized that yes, when the ball is nice and hard, the seam is pronounced, it will do a little more and as and when the ball becomes softer, it’ll become slightly easy,” the 31-year-old seamer said to reporters after the end of day’s play in Kolkata.

“It’s all heart; the guy doesn’t stop. You know, he just carries on going,” Steyn said. “And whenever his captain throws him the ball, he seems to deliver, and he just runs in nonstop. Bowl these long spells. You know, up to 8 overs, 9-over spells. I’ve seen him do it before. And he seems to deliver every time. And depending on the conditions, he’s able to adapt. In the UK, he was swinging the ball beautifully. And he waited for his turn. I mean, he played in all those Test matches and bowled beautifully, and the wickets came for him in the last Test match. A lot of bowlers can become quite despondent, you know. If things are not going your way, you start searching, but he waited and it came good for him in that game. And the same thing happened in this game. He bowled from the far end, where it wasn’t a lot of up and down movement. It wasn’t going his way. He came back and bowled from this side here, got a little bit of reverse swing, picked up two wickets. So his heart is what stands up for me a lot of the time.

“Steyn is absolutely right in terms of understanding what lines to bowl and what lengths to bowl on a wicket like this… the sooner you understand that, the easier it is for a bowler,” the legendary legspinner added. “And Bumrah, I’m sure, in that first spell, realised that this is not a wicket where you will get swing, there wasn’t much of that. We expected the ball to swing a lot more early in the day, but that didn’t happen. So he realised that, look, you need to hit the deck and then keep varying the lengths and that’s exactly what he did. He never gave a single opportunity for the batter to go against what Jasprit does, and it was very difficult for the batter to think that they can get a boundary, easy boundary or easy runs, and that’s something that he did; control the game and controlled the pace of the batter as well. And when you do that, when you put that doubt in the batter’s mind, it’s very difficult to go past that with Bumrah.”

“He was, the blueprint for the day of how bowlers should bowl, not just based on the wickets that he took. Obviously, he was a standout in terms of taking his five-for, but if you watch the areas that he bowled and how he bowled, that’s how, I think the South Africans should start to look at bowling themselves. He hit the deck real hard, didn’t bowl many half volleys, or any soft deliveries. He targeted the stumps well, gave away very little, the runs that were scored off him, almost down at third man. So that’s kind of like the blueprint that I think that as a fast bowler, if you want a bowl, you want to be successful on this particular deck, you have to follow that. And if you do that, I mean, you’ll get the rewards similar to the way that he got his five-for.”

“2015, I was quite new to Test cricket and Ravi Ashwin was bowling like a jet and I think he took close to 40 wickets in that series. The expectation that I needed to do the same and dealing with that and putting myself in even more pressure. Now, I think I am a lot more confident in my ability. And I don’t have as many doubts that I had back then. I was fighting for a place in the team whereas now I feel like I have the skillset to compete. Whether or not it goes my way is sometimes the luck of the draw but as long as I can go back and say I put balls in the right areas, I can be happy with that. I am obviously a lot more experienced since the last time I was here,” the 36-year-old said.

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