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The first day of the first Test Match (held in Chennai) of South Africa’s tour of India is of to pretty good start. To put the cricketing events of the day in a chronological order, Graeme Smith won the toss for the South Africans and elected to bat first. Smith then himself came out to bat with fellow opener - Neil McKenzie. And the pair of them breezed through the Indian pace attack. Both Sreesanth & RP Singh proved to be completely ineffctive against McKenzie & Smith who put on a partnership of 132. Then in the 33rd over Anil Kumble struck for India, a poor stroke by Smith (73 runs) lobbed a catch for VVS Laxman to take easily. McKenzie wasn’t in a hurry to follow his captain, McKenzie played beautifully and looked set for a wonderful century but to my dismay he got out at 94 in the 50th over. A lovely flighted deliverey by Harbhajan Singh which dipped on McKenzie took his bat’s edge and Dravid who was standing in the slips made no mistake.

The other two wickets that fell were also of Harbhajan’s & Kumble’s bowling:

1. Jacques Kallis (13) - catch taken by Wasim Jaffer off of Harbhajan Singh’s bowling.
2. And then AG Prince (23) was caught and bowled by Anil Kumble. The catch was simply awesome, Kumble, a natural right hander had to dive to his left and catch the bowl with his left hand; a stunning effort by someone who is in his mid 30’s.

No more wickets fell in the day after that, Hashim Amla at the end of the day had made 85 runs of 159 balls and AB Devilliers, 10 of 26 balls.

So, at the end of the day, South Africa had made 304 runs and lost 4 wickets in the process. If Indians bowl well tomorrow and are able to get SA out before lunch for say, 400 to 450, then we have a cracker of a Test Match on our hands! But if South Africa go on to make runs in excess of 400-500 batting through the second day then on this beautiful batting wicket tailor made for the batsmen, we are in for a boring draw

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