INDIA LOSE PLOT IN 46 MINUTES

All-rounder Jansen’s short-ball ploy works as hosts stare at another series loss at home

- SWAROOP SWAMINATHAN @ Guwahati

South Africa players celebrate the dismissal of Ravindra Jadeja (R)

(PTI)

WERE India willing to sacrifice four points to go in search of 12 in the all important World Test Championship (WTC) table? That was the one question the leadership group and the support staff may have kept asking each other all through Sunday evening and Monday morning before turning up to the ACA Stadium.

Trailing by 480 runs with three days play remaining — around 240 overs after budgeting for bad light — the hosts’ path to victory and levelling the series was complicated. The most straightforward one was to bat the next 150 overs, get a lead of around 125-150 before giving their spinners a chance on a crumbling Day Five deck. Of course, there were several caveats to this approach. Chiefly, the pitch remaining fairly similar to Saturday and Sunday. There was also the question of whether the Indian batters would be willing to show the same tenacity as the visiting batters did.