Wanderers: A gutsy Dean Elgar was happy to shun elegance for efficacy as he steered South Africa to a creditable seven-wicket series-levelling victory in the second Test against India here on Thursday.Dean Elgar, Winning captain and Player of the Match, said, don’t know what’s the right or wrong way in winning a cricket match, but it’s all about doing the basics right. We ticked a lot of boxes right to make it 1-1. We now go to Cape Town with plenty of confidence – it wasn’t easy, the batters were determined. but credit to our bowlers, the effort they put in was very impressive. I am yet to see the bruises (the blows he received), but it’s a big motivation to go and play for your country. Whatever I’m going through, it’s important to see the bigger picture and the bigger picture is to win games for your country. When you perform like this over the period of four days, it does make you forget the pain in doing so. A lot of test for our batters, we have struggled to find the right batting line-up, find the people for the right roles, entrust the people into their roles and to bat in such a way in not so easy conditions pleases you a lot. The way he batted (Rassie van der Dussen), he will go a long way in his career, the way he batted (during his knock of 40) will set him up in the future. Sometimes KG needs something to happen around, the catch that RvVD took, it got him into the mindset, he wants to be fired up all the times, he wants to bowl well and as a captain, it’s nice to get him running around. It wasn’t easy, but the bowlers did the job for me. Not exactly sure what will happen in CT, played a domestic game there, interesting to see what kind of a surface they’ll give us. 1-1, South Africa v India, going into the final Test all square, we couldn’t have written a better script.
Rahul, Losing captain, said, ‘ Every Test match we play, we want to win, we go out there and compete hard, but South Africa played really well and deserved this victory. We were looking to get on the field today, try and do something special, 122 to get, the pitch was playing up and down, we had a good chance, but their batters played really well. If I want to be harsh, the first innings total of 202 was at least 50-60 runs short, we should have scored more and put them under pressure. Shardul (Thakur) has been superb for us, has won us a lot of games, he bowled well in the first innings and gave us a chance today as well. They have been great players for us (on Pujara and Rahane), have always done the job for us over the years, have been under the pump recently, but we believe Pujara and Rahane are our best middle-order players, to go out there, bat in that mindset and play such an innings. It’ll give them confidence and make them do even better in the next Test. Virat is already feeling better, he’s been doing a bit of fielding and think he’ll be fine. With Siraj, we need to monitor him in the nets. It’s tough to come back immediately from a hamstring issue, but we do have a good bench strength in the form of Umesh and Ishant. We expected this when we came here, every Test will be competitive and challenging, we’ll be more hungrier after this disappointing loss. Looking forward to Cape Town and the third Test.’