India Overpower South Africa At The MCG

NEW DELHI: It is natural to go ga-ga over India's victory over South Africa at the MCG— because this is the first time they have beaten the Proteas in a World Cup match after losing at all their three previous meetings.

Yet, to disprove the critics, India have done everything they looked incapable of doing just a month ago. They batted beautifully, bowled purposefully and were amazingly athletic in the field. Otherwise it is well nigh impossible to beat the Proteas by 130 runs and that too in a key World Cup game that may as well decide who tops the group.

To win back-to-back matches so convincingly is no joke and the Indians kept up the momentum so well. Playing Pakistan drains an Indian team and then to be taking on South Africa can be further demanding.

The big revelation was the way the fast bowlers fielded. First, Shami took a splendidly well-judged catch on the boundary off Mohit Sharma who also got top-scorer Faf du Plessis to make sure the South Africans have no pretensions of a late fightback.

Then the turning point in the match when Mohit's brilliant throw from the outfield ran AB de Villiers out. The pick up and release of the ball was so quick and precise that MS Dhoni had to just give the finishing touch.

As if that's not enough, Umesh Yadav showed the strength of his throwing arm to get rid of another dangerous batsman David Miller, who had bailed the side out along with JP Duminy against Zimbabwe -- both scoring hundreds.

The two run-outs effected by the two pace bowlers shows that the Indian fielding has gone up by a notch or two and, as Dhoni said in his post-match comments, they made his life easy in implementing team plans and not worry about hiding slowcoaches. Not many may have noticed that all 10 Pakistani batsmen were out to catches at Adelaide.

Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli continued their rebuilding work from the Pakistan match after Rohit Sharma was unlucky to be run out with de Villiers finding one stump to aim good enough.

Shikhar found Ajinkya Rahane, who came in to bat in the 50th over against Pakistan, in a more belligerent mood. His phenomenal strike rate (79 off 60 balls) gave India a 300-plus total to breathe easy. What's pleasing about Rahane is that, like Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman, he looks so graceful playing cricketing shots -- not for him the ungainly slogging. Moreover, he looks as assured as Kohli at the wicket to calm the dressing room.

Dhawan, who was struggling to get into the line to middle the ball, made some course correction -- as he himself said after the match -- and suddenly he looks in good nick. Come to think of it, quite a few thought Murali Vijay should have been retained sending the Delhi southpaw back.

India beat South Africa in the 2013 Champions Trophy and Dhawan scored a century then, too. The MCG victory is India's third biggest win against South Africa.

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