As i said earlier , I thought the difference in this game in terms of a result would be the South African pacemen and they did prove me right. Ntini was bowling in the right areas with the new ball and got a bit of swing. Steyn finally got the rewards he deserves for some fantastic first class orthodox fast bowling.

They quite simply outclassed us today. Even Morkel was good today and he exerted quite a bit of pressure on our batsman, only for them to fall to a different bowler.  Sometimes you bowl your heart out and the other guy reaps the reward, but young Morkel will realize that such things even out.

I thought Dravid continued where he left of from yesterday. Defensive, single-minded , safe and stagnating! Never really attacked their bowlers having settled there well.

Sachin was Sachin . Just a pity that he had to have the rare blip in Chennai after we gave him a reception which SUPERSTAR RAJNIKANTH would have been proud of !

Ganguly had nice ideas and great intent! He started to meet the ball in the middle of the bat and looked good from start. But he fell to a poor shot (maybe unexpected extra bounce?). Laxman did his job perfectly, he just needed an aggressor in the other end !

The South Africans had a great game plan for Dhoni.  They hardly bowled anything bad to him. They made it very difficult for him, put him under pressure and then Steyn came up with a beauty of a spell to pick him out. I don't blame Dhoni because the Proteas did their homework very well on that case!

Basically , I felt that our batsman were overawed by the hooplah created by Sehwag and then Dravid's 100 and 10k runs n all that. That made some of them lose their focus and the grip on the game. The South Africans made the most of it with some of the best fast bowling spells I’ve seen in Chepauk.

As for our bowling today, I left about a hour before the final over because I was fed up with the sharpness in our bowling. I thought we had no hope with Sreesanth and R.P in this condition. You could clearly see the difference when Ntini and Steyn had the new ball and when our lads had it ! Sreesanth is all effort and he even has the pace to hurt them but he hardly maintains some consistency and length!

R.P , my favourite looked even worse. He ran like as if he was having a stroll in the park and he had no strength in his deliveries! The swing was his only weapon but he could hardly gather it as he was just too slow with no wind whatsoever !

Our only hope are our spinners! Just pray that the pitch does a thing or two tomorrow and Bajji can produce a world class spell. But all the signs are pointing at a draw and a nice retiring Sunday for me.

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