South Africa slide from 88 for 1 to 102 for 4 to go to lunch on the second day 100 runs behind
Three wickets late in the first session from Shardul Thakur spoilt South Africa’s morning on the second day of the second Test in Johannesburg.Keegan Petersen’s maiden half-century in Test cricket and, before that, his 74-run stand for the second wicket with Dean Elgar had given South Africa the edge. But Thakur got rid of both of them, edging behind, just before lunch. And then, in the last over before the break, he found Rassie van der Dussen’s inside edge, which hit his body and lobbed behind the wickets. The batter walked back but replays showed that the ball had bounced just in front of the diving Rishabh Pant.That meant South Africa went into the break at 102 for 4 after being 88 for 1 at one stage.Earlier, Petersen and Elgar added 74 in 35 overs to keep India at bay despite a probing first hour of bowling. Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami tested the duo – Bumrah with a bit of wobble in the air and Shami with the movement off the seam.Both came close to picking up wickets.Bumrah got one to come back into Petersen after a string of awayswingers. The batter shouldered arms and, luckily for him, the ball went over the stumps.A few overs later, Elgar edged one off Bumrah and Pant took it low; the on-field umpires referred it upstairs with the soft signal as out. The third umpire, though, concluded that it was a bump ball.In the next over, Shami cut Petersen in half but on this occasion, too, the ball sailed over the wickets.KL Rahul then turned to Mohammed Siraj. Siraj had left the field after hurting his hamstring in the penultimate over of the first day but on Tuesday, he was on the field right from the start. He started with a shorter run-up and was down in pace as well. Petersen took advantage of that, hitting two boundaries in his first over of the day.Elgar, meanwhile, was stuck on his overnight score of 11. It took him 32 balls to score his first runs of the morning – at one point, he had faced 47 dots in a row. He broke that sequence with a flicked boundary off R Ashwin in the offspinner’s first over of the match.Petersen, who is playing his fourth Test but was facing spin of any kind for the first time, too cut Ashwin to the cover boundary.Eventually, it was Thakur who broke the stand when Elgar edged to Pant for 28. Petersen reached his half-century with a boundary off Shami and celebrated it with two more fours in the over, but his rare loose shot outside off against Thakur gave India the chance to make a comeback.
