India find the shoe on the other foot

Jasprit Bumrah woke up the sparse Sunday crowd in Guwahati with a yorker in the fourth over of the morning. Kyle Verreynne got his bat down in time against a ball fired just under 140 kmph, hinting at what was coming on a long day for the hosts. It was a reflection of what came in the morning session, as India's aspirations of quickly picking out the last four wickets was met with firm dead-batting.

The first two hours became all about control. South Africa went to Tea with a control percentage of 94.3, their best in a session on this tour. Verreynne and Senuran Muthusamy showed control, but couldn't align that with run-making. The duo scored 69 in the morning session in 29.1 overs at a scoring rate of 2.36 – their lowest on this tour.

A new day called for a newer plan and India, expectedly, adapted. Kuldeep alluded to it at close of play – about having to mix his speeds. There was a big shift in lengths too. India's spinners bowled 24 balls at the back of a length or shorter for the entirety of Day 1, but crossed that number (33) in just the first session of Day 2.

It was one of several choices aimed at stopping South Africa from running away on what felt like a peak batting day. Bowlers stuck to the script, and didn't chase after a protagonist's role that wasn't there to be taken up. Rishabh Pant too was astute with his fields, not letting his risk-positive batting lean into his captaincy duties.

"I was just trying to use the angles, and try to beat them in drift and in pace as well," Kuldeep later revealed. "Obviously it's very good to have an attacking mindset but you have to understand how the wicket is playing and you can't just go attack all the time, and just leak runs you know. I thought fielding positioning was very good."

India approached the second session with more vigour. Bumrah bowled another yorker that floored Verreynne this time, and Mohammed Siraj asked the crowd to raise the volume. They obliged and India enjoyed a nice little period of play where a wicket seemed inevitable. Verreynne cracked while facing Ravindra Jadeja, and exited after playing 122 balls.

This was the point, with South Africa at 334/7, where Marco Jansen took over and added many more miles to the legs of India bowlers. They'd already sent down 120 overs by then, but perhaps, wouldn't have anticipated having to go 30 overs more for the last three wickets. The pitch was true and there was no spin or seam for the bowlers, allowing the #9 batter to throw his bat around for fun. Fun, that lasted 91 balls, fetched 93 runs and included seven big sixes. Through it all, Pant could only offer support and spread out fields to his bowlers as they searched and failed to find a way through.

After the fourth of those seven sixes flew, Pant's pleas of 'patience rakho' [keep patience] came as half a scream. For the rest of that second session, Pant made minor tweaks to his boundary riders almost every second delivery, encouraged his bowlers to bowl fuller and even suggested a change in bowling angles. But nothing came from any of it. By the time he played one on from Kuldeep, South Africa had batted 151.1 overs and amassed 489 first-innings runs.

It was a day that once again showed the strong correlation between winning the toss and holding all the aces on a surface like this. Temba Bavuma enjoyed the rub of the green against Pant, and his batters have maximised that game of chance.

All of this is heavily tinged in coincidence and irony. Six years ago, South Africa were on the receiving end of this very situation across three Tests – in Visakhapatnam, Pune and Ranchi. At all those places, Virat Kohli won the toss, India batted first and buried South Africa under a mountain of runs for more than five sessions, and then let spin take over. India made 502/7, 601/5 declared and 497/9 declared in those games and won the last two by an innings. Funnily enough, Bavuma was even at the toss of that last fixture in Ranchi, where captain Faf du Plessis brought him along to flip the coin in the hope that it would reverse his luck. It didn't.

The shoe is now on the other foot for India. They've played out 6.1 overs on a floodlit evening, but concentration and intentions need to be reset when their long trek back begins on the third morning.