Tough pitch: Making sense of the Cape Town Test

642 balls, 464 runs, 33 wickets.

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The shortest result match in Test history saw a wicket, on average, falling every 19.4 balls - the lowest dismissal rate in any Test match ever.

While a target of 79 is unlikely to be defended in a Test, this game had already had its fair share of 'first-time-ever' moments. India's approach to the chase showed that they were not willing to grind it out, invite pressure and add to this Test's record book. While it seemed clear that Yashasvi Jaiswal was going to approach it like any other IPL innings, Rohit Sharma attempted to go down the classical route when he went to defend his first delivery of the innings off Kagiso Rabada. Rohit's attempt at a front-foot block to a good-length delivery left him in considerable pain as it reared and hit his right shoulder. Rohit's response was to step out and away from the line of the ball to extend his arms. This was the first over of a Test innings against a bowler with 290 Test wickets to his name. Rohit got a couple of runs for his trouble but it characterised what an elite batter with multitudes of international thought of this pitch experience As expected, it was central to almost every discussion point around the Cape Town Test, and rightly so.

CricViz's PitchViz model assesses the characteristics of individual pitches using balltracking data and is based on a lot of constituent traits - for example, the pace of the pitch, the consistency in bounce, swing movement, seam deviation, etc., and gives it a rating out of 10. The higher the PitchViz number, the harder it is to bat.