Follow UsIt was not a beating. It was a demolition. What India are doing in the ongoing ICC Cricket World Cup is just getting the opposition to the stadium and running their own show in their own way. After posting 326 runs on a difficult Kolkata track, India gave no chance to South Africa to have any sort of comeback and shut them out for 83, securing a 243-run win.
While spinners ruled the roost, with Ravindra Jadeja taking a five-wicket haul, pacers set up the early base, after which South Africa could never recover. While soaking in the pleasure of becoming only the second Indian spinner to take a five-wicket haul in the ODI World Cup, Jadeja credited the fast bowlers for making things easier for them.
“See, always, in any format that you are playing, when your fast bowler takes 2-3 wickets from the top, it becomes easier for the spinner. Because a batsman who comes on slow wickets cannot play big shots straight away,” Jadeja said in the post-match press conference.
“I think it's good that all three fast bowlers are giving us 2-3 wickets in every match. Sometimes more than that. It's good. Hopefully, in the upcoming knockout stage, if our team performs like this, it will be very good.”
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The wicket behaved very strangely throughout the match. While Indian openers Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill played on it like a batting paradise, the turn was visible in the middle overs. It took an extremely crafty partnership between Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer to change the course of the game. Jadeja stated that when India batted, the wicket was more in favour of spinners than in the evening.
“I think when they were bowling, it was more healthy. I think the turn was more, and the bounce of the wicket was less. But now, if you ask me personally, the wicket in the afternoon and now - now it was a little easier. I won't say easy, but it was fine. But in the afternoon, there was a turn and it was slow, so batsmen couldn't hit. But credit to Virat and the middle-order batsmen who handled their spinners; it was very good.
“We have an idea that whenever we come to Kolkata, the bounce is less and the spin is also there. So maybe that was an advantage that we knew that there would be spin and the wicket would be played slowly. Mentally we were prepared with this.”
“After winning the toss, we were trying to challenge ourselves. Because if we had bowled in the afternoon, we might not have scored so many runs. As I said, the ball was stopping a lot, and there was no bounce. And the turn was increasing. It was continuously turning.
“So, it was a challenge for us to take first batting and in the second innings if the dew comes, how can we bowl with the dew? Because if such a situation comes in the knockout stage, we should know how to handle that situation. That was the only reason.”
It was a special moment for Virat Kohli to equalize with Sachin Tendulkar’s record of 49 ODI centuries. The flair with which he has done that made it even more memorable - on a wicket that had enough demons to curtail him, Kohli never stopped. Jadeja was a big fan of that performance.
“I would say this is special for him as well as tough because the way the wicket was in the afternoon, at one time, it felt like 260-270 is also fine, and at that time, rotating the strike and taking boundaries, I think that must have been very challenging.
“So, especially, I would say that when the team was not getting a run, both their spinners were bowling well, and at such a time to rotate the strike, to take boundaries, and to get a score of above 300 and be not out - that is a very big achievement and a very big effort for him,” Jadeja added.