Third day in Bangalore washed out

AB de Villiers marked his 100th Test with a stroke-filled 85 to revive struggling South Africa on the opening day of the second Test against India in Bangalore on Saturday.

With eight of their batsmen surrendering to the Indian spinners in the first innings at Bengaluru, South Africa already find themselves on the back foot in the four-test series. Amla played down the wrong line to fast bowler Varun Aaron as the Proteas were reduced to 45/3.

India now lead the four-match Test series called the Gandhi-Mandela Series 2015-16, as they had won the opening Test at Mohali by a huge margin of 108 runs. Finally, in the last over, just before the tea, De Villiers surrendered his wicket to Jadeja.

The South African star followed that with a sweetly-timed on-drive off Aaron for a boundary and pulled Ashwin to the square-leg fence. Alongside him was Murali Vijay, batting on 28 off 73 balls.

A few hardy spectators had braved the elements and still turned up, in the vain hope that some play would be possible post lunch, but they had to leave disappointed. Before unease could set in, though, Kohli had the luxury of going to Ashwin, who is in such imperious form that South Africa have been playing the man and not the ball.

“He was bottling one end up, which was precisely our plan. At this point of time, I seemed to be enjoying the kookaburra a lot more”, Ashwin said at the end of first day’s play. Ashwin immediately got into the act with twin strikes in his very first over. India were on in the field too: every ball was chased down with intent, and there were at least three excellent catches taken.

The spinner trapped Stiaan van Zyl plumb in front and, three balls later, had Faf du Plessis caught at short leg as South Africa slumped to 15 for two.

Jadeja’s first wicket was that of Dean Elgar immediately after lunch as the left-hander went for a sweep, only to glove it on to the stumps after making a fighting 38.

Ashwin also praised Ajinkya Rahane for doing a good job in the slips and taking a brilliant catch off his bowling to get rid of Jean Paul Duminy.