“What a shot!” cried Virat Kohli as the batsman just dismissed, Kyle Verreyne, stood shoulders drooped in comprehension of what he had just done. South Africa’s score was 85/5 just 4.1 overs into the second day of the Cape Town Test, trailing India by 13 runs.
On a pitch that was tough to bat on because of the alarming quickness off it, as well as some variable bounce, 23 wickets had fallen the previous day which stands as the second most on day one of a Test match ever.
On the second morning, Jasprit Bumrah needed little time to get David Bedingham and South Africa were slipping. Instead of trying to fight it out, Verreyne chose to attack Bumrah and popped a simple catch to mid-on. That dismissal summed up what batsmen on both sides probably felt about batting on a lottery of a Cape Town surface: damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Which is the story of the shortest Test match of all time, over in just 642 deliveries, which India won by seven wickets to level the series at 1-1.
This match will take some comprehension, and those who in years to come might stumble upon its scorecard cannot truly know the story of what transpired at Newlands. This was not a pitch suited to Test cricket, and you can imagine the outcry had this been an Indian surface on which 23 wickets fell in a day.
Deliveries reared up off good lengths while others stayed low, by South African standards. Both wicketkeepers leapt up to collect the ball and the slips and gully were kept alert all match. You could see length balls move off the seam and spit up to hit the shoulder of the bat. Batsmen needed dollops of luck to survive. Dean Elgar’s final Test saw him out twice in a day, as did Tristan Stubbs’ debut match.
What undid batsmen was the somewhat alarming bounce, which is why you can see just one wicket lbw. So many deliveries lifted to catch players from both teams lacking the required skill in two minds. Yes, it was bloody tough, but you got the sense that at some level it was also some confused batting. And here is where India won this Test match, when Mohammed Siraj claimed six wickets for 15 runs before lunch as South Africa were bowled out for 55 which stands as their lowest Test score since readmission.
India, later on day one, became the first team in history to lose six wickets as they slid dramatically from 153/4 to 153 all out. Six of their 11 failed to score and another was 0 not out, with only Kohli (46), Rohit (39), Shubman Gill (36) and KL Rahul (8) getting off the mark.
Aiden Markram was the only man to get to 50 in a Test match that lasted less than four and a half sessions, and his 101 on day two was a tremendous knock that shoved all other contributions into the background. Dropped on 73 by Rahul, Markram showed exactly how to bat on such tracks with an array of shots and deft use of the crease, but in the end the damage caused by India’s pacers on the first morning of this Test left South Africa chasing the game.
On day two, Bumrah took his ninth five-wicket haul in no time to rightfully be the bowler of the day for India, and set a target of 79 the visiting team won by seven wickets to carry some momentum home. For a generation who remembers 81 all out in Barbados 1997, it is tough to shake the feeling that a target in excess of 125 might have been a very different story.
