I am well aware that the Ashes isn’t the only series currently going on in the world of cricket and will be keeping an eye on the contest between the teams regarded as the best two sides in the world.
Obviously conditions at Centurion on day 1 suited bowling, but even so, India would have expected to do a touch better than the 136/9 they currently find themselves struggling on.
It is often said you can’t win a test on the first day, but you can certainly ensure you won’t win it, and that looks like what India have already achieved.
It was also a fairly safe bet that the South Africans were never going to prepare the sorts of pudding of a wicket that Sehwag and his pals are used to batting on for two days at a time in India.
With Steyn and Morkel bowling in testing conditions it was never going to be easy, they will give India’s batting a proper examination over the next 3 weeks. Conditions will no doubt be easier to bat in later in this series though, we will then see if this India batting line up is as good on the road as it is on their own lifeless flat tracks.
