GUWAHATI: At first glance, the bare basics of the scoreboard — South Africa 247/6 in 81.5 overs — tells you something about the day's play. The visitors batted first, some of them got starts but failed to convert and the Indian bowlers picked up wickets at regular intervals to restrict the visitors on a good first day deck for batting. It was, in a nutshell, an even day's play with both sides carrying enough happiness as well as regret.
But on days like Saturday, when Guwahati became the 30th venue to host Test cricket in the country, the scoreboard doesn't even begin to tell the story of how the action unfolded. On an unhurried day of red-ball cricket where batters were rewarded for their patience and punished for impatience, one spinner stood tall to ensure the hosts had their noses in front when bad light intervened.
India have so often seen their spinners run through opposition teams in these parts for well over a decade. So this is all supposed to be normal but there's still some getting used to Kuldeep Yadav's bewitching genius at work.
For one, it's cooler when a wristspinner is the one picking up wickets. When you add the prefix 'left-arm' to that, it becomes borderline illegal. That feeling is may be because a left-arm wristspinner in red-ball cricket is the stuff of unicorns, something straight out of fantasy. All Test playing teams employ finger-spinners, a few have right-arm wrist-spin but the left-arm wrist-spin is the hardest skill to pick up in the game because one person is marrying two of the rarest things in the game -- a southpaw picking up wrist-spin -- and running with it.
On the first day, Yadav ran the show for the hosts, showing exactly why he's a point of difference even when the pitch is good for batting. There was none of the exaggerated turn or the variable bounce that was on offer at Eden Gardens last week. Sure, flamboyant stroke-play wasn't easy but batters could trust the surface.
Enter Yadav, introduced in the second hour of the Test by Rishabh Pant. What separates Yadav from the other spinners in this team is he's not afraid to toss the ball, give some air and eat a few boundaries if the reward at the end of it is a wicket. He's also consistently slower through the air than, say, Ravindra Jadeja (on Saturday, he dipped into the late 70 kphs and was seldom over 85 kph while the left-arm fingerspinner is seldom below 85 kph). Because of the variety he brings to the table, it's also kind of hard to sweep him (Temba Bavuma, who likes premeditating that shot, swept Jadeja but didn't even entertain that shot against Yadav).
Pant, who has captained Yadav in IPL, brought him back after lunch and he rewarded him second ball with a delivery he bowled a lot of today; lot of air, some drift and a hint of turn. Ryan Rickelton nicked off.
Another delivery with some drift accounted for Stubbs for his second wicket. The No. 3, batting on 49, had made it a point to use his long levers and come down the wicket whenever possible, but the 30-year-old outfoxed him. "It sort of beat me in the drift," Stubbs said after the day's play. "That's sort of why my hands got away, so I think that's how he got me out, not looking for one more (for my 50), just the drift and my hands sort of following it, so it's probably on a Day One wicket, that's probably how he's trying to get you out, but for him to bowl that first ball (of a new spell) coming back, I thought it was quite impressive."
His third wicket was a bonus but it followed the same template. Tossed up and asking the batter 'are you brave enough to clear this 78kph over mid-off?' Wiaan Mulder tried to be brave but failed to clear the fielder.