South Africa were eyeing victory after Dale Steyn picked up a career-best 7-51 to trigger a dramatic India collapse on the third day of the first Test yesterday.
The right-arm quick polished off the last six India wickets for 12 runs in 7.4 overs after tea to bundle them out for 233 and help the visitors enforce the follow-on at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium in Nagpur.
Following on, India were tottering at 66-2, trailing South Africa by 259 runs on first innings with eight wickets in hand.
Murali Vijay was batting on 27 with Sachin Tendulkar on 15 when stumps were drawn for the day.
Steyn struck again in India’s second innings, sending back Virender Sehwag for 16, while Morne Morkel pegged back the off-stump of the other opener, Gautam Gambhir (1).
India’s slide began with the dismissal of skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni (6) in the first over after the tea break.
Subramaniam Badrinath’s resistance in his first Test appearance was cut short in the next over when he chipped Steyn straight to short mid-wicket. His 56-run innings came off 139 balls and included seven fours.
The other debutant, Wriddhiman Saha, was out off the first ball he faced from Steyn. Zaheer Khan and Amit Mishra played onto their stumps, before Harbhajan Singh was trapped leg before wicket, giving Steyn his 13th five-wicket haul in 37 Tests.
The only positive for India was the 109-run knock by Sehwag, who hit 15 fours and also shared a partnership of 136 runs for the fourth wicket with Badrinath after India were reeling at 56-3.
Sehwag was dismissed shortly after reaching his 18th Test century, however, when he sliced a quite wide delivery from paceman Wayne Parnell (1-31) to cover, where Jean-Paul Duminy took a well-judged catch.
Replying to South Africa’s first innings 558-6 declared, India were off to a disastrous start, losing their three top-order wickets inside the first hour.
Steyn got rid of Tendulkar (7) and Vijay (4) after Morkel (1-58) had dismissed Gambhir (12) to reduce the hosts to 119-3 at lunch.
Gambhir, coming into the series with eight centuries in his last 11 Tests, was out off the first ball he faced when he was caught by wicketkeeper Mark Boucher after poking at an away-swinging delivery.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier