IND vs SA: Allan Donald Slams Indian Bowlers For Incompetent Outing In 1st Test Against South Africa at Centurion

Former South Africa pacer Allan Donald provided his honest assessment of Rohit Sharma’s team India’s shambolic loss to the Proteas in the 1st Test at Centurion. The hosts lost by an innings and 32 runs with both the Batting and Bowling departments looking out of shape and out of sight to win.

Unlike the South African bowlers, India’s bowling department lacked a clear-cut edge but most importantly they lacked discipline and consistency while finding the correct areas to bowl in the unpredictable 22-yard track at Centurion.

South Africa’s bowling attack led by Kagiso Rabada had planned extensively to counter all Indian batters and the home conditions favored them pretty much or one can say that they knew exactly what to do. After winning the toss, Temba Bavuma’s decision to bat first paid off as soon as the 1st session began.

The visitors lost Captain Rohit Sharma, Yashasvi Jaiswal, and Shubman Gill very early thanks to Rabada’s and Nandre Burger’s fiery opening spells. As Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer tried to stitch a partnership to consolidate India’s hopes of posting a big total, Rabada removed both of South Africa’s threats in no time.

It was all because of KL Rahul’s resilience on Day 1 that India were able to at least put 200 on the board with the Wicket-Keeper batsman scoring his 8th Test century on Day 2 before the hosts folded the visitors for 245 runs.

In response, the Indian bowling line-up was required to get off to a flyer by picking at least 3-4 wickets by the 1st session itself but after Aiden Markram’s dismissal, Dean Elgar got set and took the game far away from India’s hands.

Elgar, who will be playing his farewell test match on January 3rd, scored an incredible 185 off 287 with debutant David Bedingham scoring 56 while Marco Jansen’s 84 off 47 took South Africa way ahead as they posted 408.

Only a miracle of a batting performance could have saved India but no one except Virat Kohli was able to show up as India were all out for 131. While the batting department needs to rethink a bit, Allan Donald highlighted on what went wrong with India’s bowling.

“I know South Africa probably got the better of the conditions, no questions about that. They pitched the ball in a 5 and 5.5 meter area and gave it a chance to do something off the deck. But what they did better than India…they were more patient in that area and even they used the short ball a little bit more in the second innings.” – Allan Donald said.

Allan Donald Highlights Indian Bowler’s Inconsistency

One of the things that not just Allan Donald but everyone who saw the 1st Test, thinks that Jasprit Bumrah, Shardul Thakur, Prasidh Krishna, and Mohammad Siraj were impatient with their plans as they were changing their line and length now and then.

“For India, there was one debutant (Prasidh Krishna). I thought (Jasprit) Bumrah, but Indian bowlers searched too much for things to happen. They quickly reverted to shorter balls and then lost their length a bit on the shorter side and then got opened up on either side – square leg, offside, and SA batters capitalized.” – Allan Donald added.