On a hot day in Paarl, Temba Bavuma won the toss and asked India to field first. Marco Jansen was making his debut for the hosts while Venkatesh Iyer was making his ODI bow for us. The pitch was expected to be slow and low with runs difficult to come by. Let’s take you through the action as it all went down at Boland Park:

Bumrah and co. dismiss the Protean openers early:

India got off to a dream start with Jasprit Bumrah dismissing Janneman Malan with a jaffa. India had a stranglehold over the hosts at the end of the Powerplay. To make matters worse for the Proteas, Ashwin got rid of de Kock who played for the turn and got clean bowled. Venkatesh Iyer’s exceptional fielding earned him the run-out of Aiden Markram to send South Africa reeling at 68/3 in 17.4 overs. It was all going well. Until it wasn’t...

Bavuma & van der Dussen slam a century apiece:

Rassie van der Dussen came in and swept the spinners aggressively from ball one. Until then, the batters looked tentative against Chahal and Ashwin. Suddenly, they started playing them with confidence and scoring quickly to the extent Rahul had to take them out of the attack and go back to his seamers. That put a spanner in the works for us since we were expecting wickets in the middle overs from our spin wizards.

Chahal finished wicket-less while Ashwin couldn’t add to the one he got earlier. The Protean duo continued to accumulate runs at a good rate taking their team to a massive total of 296 when even 250 looked difficult at an earlier point. The Indian batters now had a real job on their hands.

Dhawan, Virat give India strong start:

We lost skipper KL Rahul early but Dhawan and Virat were undeterred. Outstanding fifties by the pair at a brisk pace made it look like we were going to win this game convincingly. The bowling attack looked blunt against them as they picked their gaps and scored boundaries at will. Dhawan slammed ten fours in his 79 while Kohli relied more on ones and twos for his 51. However, there was a twist in the plot.

Spinners start South African resurgence and trigger collapse:

Maharaj got the wicket of Dhawan with a beauty and Shamsi followed that up with the wicket of Virat soon after. Virat would be disappointed with that as he was looking set and he threw it away. The double strike rocked the boat for us as Pant and Shreyas struggled to get going before being dismissed themselves. Venkatesh Iyer too fell trying to up the ante as our batting order fell apart. Shardul played a courageous cameo towards the end but we fell well short of the target.

India will look at what went wrong and bounce back in the next ODI at the same venue. Our performance in the middle overs with bat and ball is a point of concern. We know this team is full of character and will put up a better showing in our next outing.