Reign under cloud

If this was his lucky day, it should have been a longer one. Amit Mishra struck with his first delivery of the innings, went down on his right knee and pumped his fist. It was certainly not an unusual reaction for such early success, but there were not enough opportunities of similar celebrations during the course of the day.

With just 158 minutes of play possible due to overnight and mid-afternoon showers as well as bad light, India’s bid to close in on a victory that could help them retain the top spot in the ICC Test rankings suffered a setback. Even though 97 overs have been scheduled with an early start to the final day (8:45 am), India will have to be contend with the possibility of another truncated day in their search for seven more scalps.

It was all the more frustrating for the Indian team because the pitch had shown signs of ominous turn. Spinners Mishra and Harbhajan Singh shared the spoils as South Africa reached 115 for three in their bid to erase a first-innings deficit of 347. They still need another 232 to make India bat again, which would anyway need almost a full day to get.

Mishra, not having the benefit of long stints recently, bowled seven overs split in three spells on Wednesday. He removed a rather confident Graeme Smith with a well-measured delivery that turned in to trap the left-hander lbw. He then bowled another spell of four overs from the same (pavilion) end, without much success as Hashim Amla and Jacques Kallis read his googlies well and were not bothered too much by the leg-spinners either.

In the meantime, Harbhajan Singh seemed to be getting some turn from the other end, which Mishra got to use later in the day. The leggie removed Kallis with one that moved out viciously to find a faint edge that skipper MS Dhoni accepted with glee. As luck would have it, the umpires, who had discussed the fading light before that over, suspended play four balls after the dismissal.

Harbhajan dismissed first innings centurion Alviro Petersen, caught bat-pad by Badrinath at short-leg. Harbhajan was surprisingly asked to share the new ball with Zaheer Khan even in overcast conditions after a 93-minute delay in start, but pacemen Ishant Sharma and Zaheer were in operation in tandem soon after that. Dhoni got to try all his four specialist bowlers in the first session of one hour (14 overs), Mishra getting him the breakthrough straightaway.

Hashim Amla, lucky to be still around after being dropped by Murali Vijay at backward short-leg off Harbhajan when on 14, closed in on a half-century and may well hold the key to South Africa’s prospects because of his ability to handle spin and lower bounce better than other team-mates.

Moreover, he is in terrific form, having scored a double-century in the opening Test at Nagpur and a century in the first innings here. For India, the risk is of having to do the needful without Zaheer, who hobbled off with a slight leg injury. But then, the way the ball was turning, Sehwag might well be a good other option.