Off-spinner Simon Harmer took four wickets and pacer Morne Morkel three as South Africa shot out India for 215 in the first innings on the opening day of the third Test in Nagpur on Wednesday.
The visitors, however, surrendered some of the advantage early in their reply, losing opener Stiaan van Zyl for a duck to off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin and night-watchman Imran Tahir (4) to Ravindra Jadeja, and slumped to 11 for 2 at stumps.
- Images from third Test, Day 1
Dean Elgar (7) and captain Hashim Amla (0) were unbeaten at the crease with South Africa, who trail the four-Test series 0-1, still 204 runs behind.
Rajneesh Gupta presents some interesting numbers to take note of going into Day 2 of the Test.
108 Number of Test wickets taken by Ravichandran Ashwin on Indian soil, same as that of Javagal Srinath. Only Anil Kumble (350), Harbhajan Singh (265), Kapil Dev (219), Bhagwat Chandrasekhar (142) and Bishan Singh Bedi (137) are ahead of Ashwin.
25.80 Murali Vijay’s percentage of LBW dismissals, the highest for any Indian batsman having played 50 or more Test innings.
12 Number of wickets to fall in the day, the joint-most in a single day’s play at Jamtha, Nagpur. The third day’s play in India-South Africa Test in 2010 had also seen 12 wickets fall.
5 Number of times Murali Vijay was dismissed LBW in his last six completed innings.
4 Number of times Ashwin has dismissed Stiaan van Zyl in the series. He is the first Indian bowler to dismiss a particular South African batsman four times in a row.
3 Number of times a team has been dismissed on the opening day of a Test in this series. India were bowled out for 201 at Mohali. South Africa were then dismissed for 214. Now, India again for 215! The last time teams were dismissed on the opening day of a Test three times in a row in the same series in India was in 1974-75: India vs West Indies.
1 Ashwin is the first Indian bowler to dismiss a batsman four consecutive times on THREE separate occasions. He also dismissed New Zealand’s Daniel Flynn (in 2012) and Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara (in 2015) in four consecutive innings. Kapil, Anil Kumble and Harbhajan did so twice each.
