GUWAHATI: Were India willing to sacrifice four points to go in search of 12 in the all important World Test Championship (WTC) table? That was the one question the leadership group and the support staff may have kept asking each other all through Sunday evening and Monday morning before turning up to the ACA Stadium.
Trailing by 480 runs with three days play remaining — around 240 overs after budgeting for bad light — the hosts' path to victory and levelling the series was complicated. The most straightforward one was to bat the next 150 overs, get a lead of around 125-150 before giving their spinners a chance on a crumbling Day Five deck.
Of course, there were several caveats to this approach. Chiefly, the pitch remaining fairly similar to Saturday and Sunday. There was also the question of whether the Indian batters would be willing to show the same tenacity as the visiting batters did.
All of those best paid plans were torn and burnt thanks to a madcap 46-minute period of pure, unadulterated carnage either side of tea on Monday morning.
India had lost KL Rahul to one Keshav Maharaj delivery that bounced a bit more. It took the shoulder of the bat to first slip. But Yashasvi Jaiswal and B Sai Sudharsan were in the middle of a fine, little partnership when the car crash began, the former checking a cut off Simon Harmer straight into the waiting hands of backward point. To be fair to the southpaw, it did stop a bit on him but the pitch in itself was a fairly normal Day Three strip.
By this time, Jansen had started a new spell from the pavilion end. In hindsight, that was the spell that changed the complexion of the day, the match and the series. With the ball not moving as much, the tall pacer, who had a talk with Dale Steyn before start of play, bowled a couple of short balls. There was decent carry so he switched the length of attack.
The ball was no longer new — it was 30 overs old — but it still had some zip and pace to it. The hosts' batters have had a weakness against bowlers whose release points tower over the 2.1 territory and with Jansen getting some awkward bounce, a new tactic was born.
Sai Sudharsan let one go but Dhruv Jurel missed an attempted pull. Jansen didn't need a second invitation. Three balls later, he had his man. This one was on a sixth stump line and over the shoulder but Jurel took it on. Because of his height, he got some extra bounce but the slowness of the surface meant he mistimed the pull. Maharaj at mid-wicket did the rest.
Sudharsan had fallen by this point and the score was a very unflattering 102/4 at the break; 7/3 off 20 balls.
If tea was unpalatable to the Indian fans who had come on a Monday, what followed immediately post it would have sent most of them to the nearest restroom to throw up.
For eight balls after tea, Pant was gone, nicking off to Jansen, a wild swipe after dancing down not paying off. By now, the left-arm pacer's angle and steep bounce from just back of a length, coupled with the slow nature of the surface, meant batters were in two minds. A couple of overs later, Jansen was at it again, another shot ball catching Nitish Reddy's glove and spooning towards gully. Aiden Markram, stationed at second slip, ran before diving full length to complete a sensational one-handed grab.
Ravindra Jadeja also fell to the short ball in the slip cordon to complete a barely believable 8-1-18-4 spell from Jansen.
When asked about Jurel and Pant's shot selections, Washington Sundar, one of the two batters to offer solid resistance, said: "He (Jansen) is obviously the tallest going around and he gets that bit of a sharp bounce off a short of good length." But he maintained that the pitch 'wasn't a snake pit, it was a true wicket'.
To make matters worse, Jansen, who finished with figures of 6/48, said they didn't even pre-plan the short-ball ploy. It was something they did on the fly. "When I got my first wicket with a bouncer, we said, 'okay, cool'. let's see how long this is going to work for'. It just came off."
After the Proteas finished the day 314 in front and two full days remaining, thoughts turned to the potential of not just another series loss but a series whitewash at home.
Four losses in eight could become five in nine.
