Kanpur’s sting in the tail

As it is, this could have been a humdinger of a Test had the pitch woken up before. It was only this morning that the bowlers finally got some assistance, first South Africa’s seamers, followed by the Indian spin trio.

A few potentially absorbing classic contests were nipped in the bud: Makhaya Ntini and Shaun Pollock taking on VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid, Harbhajan Singh and Murali Kartik vs Andrew Hall and Graeme Smith. In both cases, the bowlers won the contest.

Dravid and Laxman, resuming overnight, wanted to step up the scoring with Sehwag’s innings still fresh in the mind, but it wasn’t easy. As Pollock kept things tight, Ntini struck, knocking over Laxman’s stumps with a brilliant in-swinger and having Dravid caught behind off a ball moving away.

After India suffered yet another batting collapse, the tourists were back to bat. The spinners, who were till yesterday shuddering at the sight of the 22 yards, came into their own, getting the turn and also the bounce. Harbhajan beat Hall with the turn and Kartik did Smith in with the bounce.

Indeed Kartik was in his element after his first innings disaster. Though again brought on last, he made an immediate impact. He had Martin Van Jaasrveld beaten by the armer and trapped lbw on the back foot while Smith couldn’t control the ball that climbed.

With offie Harbhajan at the other end the post-tea session had the Safs in a bind. One devastating 12-over period at the end of second session saw Harbhajan return figures of 6-2-9-2 and Kartik 6-2-11-2. All they needed was time but that ran out.

And the blame for that must lie, at least in part, with the performance of India’s senior batsmen yesterday and today. Dravid took 179 balls for his 54, Laxman’s 9 came in 28 balls and even Ganguly’s 57 was off 111 balls. This, when the need was obviously to build on the foundation laid by Sehwag and Gambhir and play to a gameplan.

Indeed, it seems in retrospect that Sehwag was batting on a different pitch. Ganguly, when asked about this, disagreed. ‘‘He scored runs when the ball was new. Besides Dravid and I also got going when we faced the second new ball.’’

It was only India’s bowling this afternoon that prevented South Africa from taking a moral victory — based on their first-innings lead — to Kolkata. Given the hosts’ world-class batting order, that’s not good enough. They now have five days at Eden Gardens to ensure that India win their first home series since end-2002.