India has imposed the follow-on on South Africa in the Ranchi test match after bundling the visitors out for 162 in the first innings. India had scored 497 batting first and South Africa had to score 298 to save the follow-on. They fell well short of that.
This is the second consecutive test match where India has imposed the follow-on on South Africa. They had done that in Pune as well and had ended up beating the Proteas by an innings there.
South Africa began the third day of the Ranchi test match at 2 for 9 and lost their captain Faf du Plessis early in the morning. Du Plessis was cleaned up by a peach of a delivery from Umesh Yadav.
After Du Plessis’ dismissal, Zubayr Hamza held the fort for South Africa with Temba Bavuma as the duo built a 91-run partnership to stabilize the ship, but once the duo was separated by Ravindra Jadeja, South Africa fell apart. Hamza, however, scored a half century before being dismissed and justified his selection.
George Linde, the debutant, showed a little bit of resilience lower down the order, but it wasn’t enough for South Africa.
Umesh Yadav was the pick of the bowlers for India as he finished with the figures of 3 for 40. Apart from him, Mohammed Shami, Ravindra Jadeja and Shahbaz Nadeem, who is also playing his first test match, got 2 wickets apiece.
India might have thought about not imposing the follow-on and batting again, but because a lot of time has already been taken out of this test match due to bad light and rain and the weather forecast for the next two days isn’t great either, Virat Kohli eventually decided to impose the follow-on.
This is the 8th time that Virat Kohli has imposed the follow-on on the opposing team as a test captain. He has gone past Mohammed Azharuddin who had done that 7 times during his captaincy stint.
