South African skipper Graeme Smith has praised his team’s impressive performance against India in first Test of the home series as they defeated India with an innings and 25 runs at Centurion.
He paid tribute to his team for its dominant performance throughout the five days of the game and said that his team was ahead of India the whole time. South Africa was able to put itself in a superior position from the start of the game except they felt
a little threat when Sachin Tendulkar and MS Dhoni put a seventh wicket stand of 172 runs on fourth day of the game.
Smith said that the seventh wicket stand at that time, the wicket was too flattened and weather was too windy and hot so bowlers had to struggle a lot especially. Steyn was brilliant at that moment as he got MS Dhoni out which benefited South Africa a lot
leading them back to the position of first session of the first day.
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/MS-Dhoni-c2028 gave too much importance to the toss and the way pitch behaved on the first day especially first two sessions of the game. Smith denied this and said he did not believe the wicket did that much in the first two sessions of the first day rather he
was hoping much more from the pitch as it remained under covers for about four days.
He also said that India expected bouncy wicket which undid India. India was expecting much more from the wicket than how actually it behaved. Indians were very tentative and most of the time played on back foot. He said that although first day was very crucial
for http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750 which lost its nine wickets in only 38 overs but most of the credit for this fabulous show goes to his bowlers and not to the pitch. He said that his bowlers were very accurate with the line and length. Although Lonwabo Tsotsobe was the only bowler
who was expensive but Smith said that he was not the weak link in South African attack, rather he is just inexperienced and growing as a cricketer.
The battle of No. 1 versus No. 2 Test teams is quite centred on South African bowling attack against Indian batting strength but as first Test concluded at Centurion, it seems quite clear that the tussle has been won by http://www.senore.com/Cricket/South-Africa-c757 in the first Test decisively.
Graeme Smith is very conscious about danger of Indian bowling attack and how wicket can play in Durban so he is preparing his players to not to take it granted that India was not able to bowl them out once. There has been a lot of rain in Durban around this
period and with Zaheer Khan in the squad, South Africa will face a different bowling attack at Durban. Smith said that although we have a strong batting line-up but we have to also realise that conditions play crucial role in batting so we have to prepare
ourselves for that.
On the other side, India will try to prove the same that they too have a strong batting line-up. Indian captain, MS Dhoni said that they would focus on levelling the series in Durban. He also said that India is in much pressure but they have played brilliantly
in pressures in past so he is expecting the same from his team.
Tags: