Pretoria: India A has a tough task ahead as they chase a total of 307 runs to win against South Africa A on the final day of the second unofficial Test against with just nine wickets in hand on Tuesday. The Proteas demolished the Indian batting in the first innings and would be looking to do same in the second innings too. India A ended the day on 3/1 as Cheteshwar Pujara managed to survive the last four overs of the day along with Shahbaz Nadeem as the night-watchman. Murali Vijay was dismissed for duck by left-arm pace-man Beuran Hendricks.
South Africa A declared their second innings after scoring 5/166 in the 63 overs that they batted and later on asked India to come out to bat for five overs that were left in the day. Pujara was batting on two whereas Nadeem hasn’t scored a run till yet. Vijay’s contribution in this match has been of just four runs in the couple of innings that he has played.
The Indian team would surely be missing the likes of Shikhar Dhawan, Suresh Raina and Rohit Sharma, who have been in great from in the recent innings that they have played, and could have made a great deal of difference at the LC de Villiers Oval here.
Earlier in the day, Nadeem bowled brilliantly as he picked up three wickets for 56 while Parvez Rasool and Ishwar Pandey claimed one wicket each. Dean Elgar scored 62 runs off 156 balls that he faced whereas the Proteas capt
ain Justin Ontong contributed 35.
Elgar added 53 runs for the first-wicket with Reeza Hendricks, who scored 22 runs. Nadeem got his first wicket in Hendricks as he was caught by Dinesh Karthik behind the stumps. Left-arm spinner continued his brilliant run and bowled out Rilee Rossouw for duck. Rossouw didn’t make any contribution to team total.
Earlier, India were dismissed for 201which allowed the hosts to take a lead of 140 runs in the first innings. India added 56 runs to the overnight score of 6/145 and in the process they lost all the remaining four wickets. All these four wickets fell in span of 24 runs and it was some brilliant bowling from left-arm seamer Beuran Hendricks who took 5 for 36 in 21 overs.