On Tuesday, Indian pacer Mohammed Shami shared that he was surprised by the fact that South Africa rolled out a sub-continental type of pitch for the second Test in Centurion. India was reduced to 35/3 while chasing a target of 287 runs for a series-leveling victory at stumps on the fourth day.
Talking about the Centurion Pitch, Shami said, “I did not expect the ball would stay so low on this wicket. Till now in overseas conditions, we have not seen such slow and low bounce wickets. So I don’t know what they were thinking when they made this wicket. But whatever it is we have to play on it and the conditions are same for both teams. Tomorrow we will try to win.”
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He further added, “The wicket has been slow since the beginning, even on the first day you saw that it is going low continuously. And even today, it went slow and low and you needed a lot of extra effort. We tried to give 110-120 percent. That was more important for us.”
Shami finished the second innings of the Centurion Test with the figures of 4/49 as the hosts were bowled out for 258. He scalped three wickets in the morning session but bowled only the last over of the post-lunch session. He did not even come on to bowl when he had the chance of taking a five-wicket haul.
Talking about the same, the Bengal pacer said, “It depends on the captain when he wants to bowl which bowler. It also depends on the conditions. The captain is also thinking that we should bowl with rotation. The plan was that whenever I will get chance I will come to bowl. There are some stages in front of you that you want to bowl more but the captain thinks that we should get them out quickly. So you cannot mind that, but yes, sometimes you do feel inside that maybe I could have got five wickets. But if you see from team’s point of view, you will not feel like this.”
South Africa’s lower-order kept India on toes in the second session of Day 4. As a result of that, India did not take the second new ball available to them. When Shami was asked if the visitors should have attacked more, he replied, “Today, the whole day, we were looking to give away as few runs as possible and we wanted to attack them fully. We went all out on the attack and gave away as few runs as possible. We wanted to bowl in good areas as we had given them a 28-run lead. So we wanted to restrict them to as low a score as possible and bowl in good areas as much as possible.”
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Describing the edgy dismissal of Quinton de Kock, the Indian fast-bowler said, “For any bowler, it is a lot of frustration when the fielder is there and edges are coming, what you want is happening but the batsman isn’t getting out. So there is a little frustration mentally but you need to be mentally strong at that stage and how long you can persist with it, that is more important. Like Quinton de Kock got three boundaries on three consecutive good balls, but I did the same again and I got the result on that.”
Having already lost three early wickets, India has a tough task ahead of them on day 5.
Asked about the team’s chances, Shami said, “About the result, we have stopped them at a very good target and the rest is about luck.”
