THE Proteas women showed good fight and determination to keep their hopes alive on Day two of the one-off Test match against India at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai on Saturday.
South Africa will begin the moving day trailing the home side by 367 runs. India declared on a record highest women’s Test score of 603-6 during the first session. South Africa with a huge task ahead, managed to get through to stumps at 236-4.
Captain Laura Wolvaardt (20) and Anneke Bosch (39) were looking good with an opening stand of 33. The surface was doing enough to keep both bat and ball in the contest, with little changes from day one’s conditions. Wolvaardt, looking to help the ball on to the leg-side missed one that kept low, and was trapped leg before wicket (LBW) by Sneh Rana (20-3-61).
Bosch had a start, and was all set to go big, but a Rana delivery took her outside edge into first slip, ending a promising stand of 63 runs with Sune Luus (65).
Luus in desperate need of runs following a bad run of form, was dropped on 38 by Richa Ghosh, and it didn’t take long before she had her heart in her mouth once again. A 43rd Deepti Sharma over saw a shout for LBW turned down by both on-field, and third umpires.
Sharma tossed another ball up in the same over, and Luus looking to defend, was only successful in finding an edge that went straight to Rana, but the Indian spinner didn’t cover her bases well, and she gave the 28-year-old another life on 44.
The pitch for an extended period, began to show signs of variable bounce, the ball was going up and down, and Sharma with Rajeshwari Gayakwad started posing the right questions to the South African batters.
Luus went on to score a welcomed half century, and she had this to say during her post day’s play interview.
“Today was probably one of the hardest sessions we had batting wise, the conditions was something you cannot train for back home, but it was obviously a great challenge, the partnership up-front with Laura and Anneke put up nicely up to lunch,” she said.
“It was a good day for us, the wicket was doing its bit, not sure where the wicket is going, the bounce is uneven, it was a pretty good day for us, we just need to finish it off tomorrow and the day after.
“Anything off the stumps we were cautious of fishing outside off stump, we just tried to cover the stumps, when it was straight we played a solid defence, and then capitalised on any freebies. When it was in your area you just had to be positive and that worked for us today.”
Marizanne Kapp (69 not out) with Luus combined for a crucial stand of 93 runs before the latter was trapped LBW by Sharma. Kapp showed intent early on her innings and punished anything with width, but also handled pressure moments well leading up to stumps.
Delmari Tucker was out for an eight-ball duck, and needing to survive to the end of the day to keep her team'’ hopes of getting close to the target alive, Nadine de Klerk joined Kapp in the middle, and looked to score at every opportunity and reached stumps on an entertaining 27 off 28 balls.