CHENNAI: To be honest, when Day Two started at Newlands with South Africa having seven wickets in hand, everyone knew it was only a matter of time. And it took exactly 31.5 overs to get a result. India recorded their first Test win in Cape Town, their first New Year's Test win in 37 years, their first shared Test series in South Africa since 2011.
Well the storyline on Thursday did not have much surprise. First Jasprit Bumrah conjured magic, registering his eighth fifer outside Asia. Then, Aiden Markram produced a batting masterclass on how to bat on an awkward Cape Town pitch. Where no other batter crossed fifty, Markram smashed a 103-ball 106 — the highest individual contribution (60.23 %) in a completed Test innings for South Africa — before the hosts were dismissed for 176. There on, it took about 12 overs for India to chase the target, and this time, Rohit Sharma ensured he was there in the middle to take the team home.
While the Test match lasted only 642 legitimate deliveries in Cape Town, every ball was an event. When Bumrah or Mohammed Siraj or Kagiso Rabada was running in, one could not take the eye off the TV screen. Having seen how the surface played out on Wednesday, they were consistently hitting the right length and letting pitch take care of the rest. The red cherry was seaming around, testing the batters, as it always has in Cape Town. And both Bumrah and Rabada showed why they are among the best in the business — the former's record is nothing short of spectacular in the all-time list, and same is the case for the South African.
The quality of the bowling apart, what made life even more difficult for the batter is the uneven bounce. It was inconsistent. On Thursday, one delivery from Rabada lifted from length to Shubman Gill on the right shoulder. Eight overs later, from the same length, another Rabada delivery would kept at about a foot high to catch him off-guard and hit the stumps. Which is what makes the century from Markram even more special.
South Africa were always expected to be a tough place to bat, especially in the last five years. However, that it had the shortest Test in history, that spinners did not bowl a single delivery, that the two-match Test series between top-ranked sides ended in four and a half days sums up the way the Newlands surface behaved. Rohit, who did not make an issue out of the surface, made it a point to talk about the comments turning surfaces in India attract from visiting sides. "It was not going to be an easy pitch. So how much ever you can try and score, apply yourself, get hit on your body, it's fine, but just go and put yourself ahead. If you have to take a blow, be ready for it. That's something that we spoke of," he said.
"It'll be one of our best Test match victories. It's very hard to compare the Tests that you play because every Test has its own importance and own relevance. The Test match that we won at The Gabba as well. The last test match that was lost by Australia in Brisbane was in 1988, I think. So you can't really rank, but this has to be right up there because we had not won here (Cape Town). That shows how important a venue this is for us to come here and perform."
Indeed, despite all the talk about the surface and how it behaved, what matters in the end is who played better on it, and in Cape Town, India did. Which is why, it will go down as one of the best overseas Test wins for India in the past decade, alongside Johannesburg 2018, Gabba 2021, Lord's 2021 and Centurion 2021.
