DNA Edit: Wanderers’ warriors

“This day will be remembered for a long time for us as a team,” said Virat Kohli on Saturday, moments after India scripted a remarkable consolation victory against South Africa to avoid a 3-0 series whitewash. But probably the more memorable day was Friday, the day the Indian batsmen transformed themselves into a bunch of warriors hungry for triumph after a couple of failures.  The bowlers had done their part well throughout the series, picking up 60 wickets for the first time in a three-Test series or more outside India since 1986.  It was the batters’ turn to deliver in the final Test and salvage some pride.

On a Wanderers pitch that had steep and often dangerous bounce for fast bowlers, the Indian batters stood tall against the adversity, and taller against the bounce, to set up a famous win for the team.  Four of India’s batsmen kept the pitch out of the equation and held fort for more than 100 minutes on a surface that was getting trickier for batting with each passing second.   It didn’t matter to the otherwise naturally-gifted strokemaker Murali Vijay that he went unsold on the first day of the IPL auctions on Saturday.  It didn’t matter to Kohli that the match was a dead rubber, with India already having lost the series.

It didn’t matter to Ajinkya Rahane that Rohit Sharma was preferred over him in the previous two Tests. It didn’t matter to the likes of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammed Shami that they had to bowl with the same fingers that they risked being hit on. For that period of almost six-and-a-half hours on Friday, the Indian batsmen had just one mission: fight hard, bat long. It gave Team India one of its best victories on foreign soil, and, like Kohli said, a massive milestone in Indian cricket.