Follow UsAfter sending the top three Indian batters back to the hut cheaply, South Africa found themselves on the receiving end of a solid partnership between Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer. The duo managed to frustrate the home pacers till lunch - which is exacerbated by the fact that their fielders dropped a couple of dollies.
But post-lunch, the narrative took a complete flip. Kagiso Rabada turned the beast mode on as both Kohli and Iyer departed in quick succession before marking his way up to a five-wicket haul before the end of the day’s play and, in the process, got to 500 international wickets.
"I was focused on my training; I knew what I wanted to get out of it. Days like this happen in cricket. Sometimes you get the ball in the right area and you're not so successful. Today was just my day. Sometimes it just happens that way,” Rabada said in the day-end press conference.
"All week, the ball's been coming out nicely, so I came into the match quite confident. I'm just glad the focused work, the hard work, paid off. My body and my mind were feeling good coming into this Test series."
The Centurion wicket had proper demons on it, with the variable bounce causing many problems for the Indian batters. Even though Marco Jansen found it hard to keep the ball in the right areas, debutant Nandre Burger was excellent from the very beginning.
"Seeing that we have two left-armers in our attack, we generally tried to swing the ball in [to the right-handers], and with the bounce we could extract from the wicket, it seemed like that was the tactic to go with at the time," Rabada said.
Virat Kohli showed incredible character to stick around. It took a jaffa from Kagiso Rabada to send the former Indian skipper packing, but before that, Kohli was also handed a reprieve down the leg side. The ball that dismissed him swung away really late after landing on the good length area - with Kohli finding himself in a difficult position to leave the ball.
"Temba had a gut feel about the best way to get wickets. It did make sense to have the leg slip - it almost worked to Virat; he got dropped at square leg. After lunch, we had to change tactics. We re-adjusted and looked to bowl channel."
"It just swung away late," Rabada said. "Most of the time he covers that channel or plays and misses. He's a fantastic player, and against him, you really have to be on. So I'm glad I got the fainty there."