The Indian team captain Virat Kohli showed some application and grittiness in his brilliant knock of 79 runs in the first innings of the third and series-deciding Test match being played at Newlands, Cape Town.
Kohli replaced Hanuma Vihari in the Indian XI for the third Test match and won the toss on his return to captaincy. India also included Umesh Yadav in the XI in place of injured Mohammed Siraj.
Indian innings didn’t start well as KL Rahul (12) and Mayank Agarwal (15) fell cheaply. Cheteshwar Pujara looked in good form, but Marco Jansen had him caught behind on a very good ball for 43 runs.
Virat Kohli came in and looked properly focused on the job at hand. Despite the enticement of hitting the ball outside off stump by the Proteas bowlers, he held onto his game plan and took runs when they bowled in his half and in stumps.
Ajinkya Rahane failed to come good, scoring 9 runs, while Rishabh Pant fell for 27, trying to hit a ball over the gully. R Ashwin fell for 2 and Shardul Thakur made 12 runs. Kohli was soon running out of partners despite making a gritty half-century, which came off 158 balls. In all, the India skipper fell for 79 runs in 201 balls with 12 fours and 1 six to his name.
India folded quickly after Kohli’s departure for 223 runs.
For South Africa, Kagiso Rabada in his 50th Test, picked 4/73, while Jansen continued to impress, picking up 3/55. Duanne Olivier and Keshav Maharaj also chipped in with a wicket each.
However, the cricket fraternity was all praises for Virat Kohli’s stubborn and self-controlled innings and lauded him on Twitter.
Here are some tweets:
