SOMSHUVRA LAHA

JOHANNESBURG: For a moment, let’s forget India lost the series a week back. Let’s also not start about how India may have got their selection wrong at Newlands and Centurion. This victory at the reverberating Bullring --- the coliseum of South African cricket --- should be celebrated and cherished in isolation. This is India in an avatar fans have been dreaming of for a long time.

Engineering this turnaround wasn’t easy. India had to overcome odds their predecessors wouldn’t have dared to dream --a treacherous pitch where they elected to bat, weathering blows inflicted by a seriously quick fiveman pace attack, an indomitable Hashim Amla and a talismanic innings from Dean Elgar. No more will they be called flat-track bullies. No longer will they be called spineless.

Thank Virat Kohli though for this streak of the team. He kept pushing his bowlers, urged fielders to be on their toes and kept the focus tight despite a partisan crowd and news of big IPL buys filtering in from the auction in Bangalore. Once they had got through the defence of Amla, India knew they were in with a chance of winning.

Thank Kohli again for that dismissal. Amla was shuffling across his stumps throughout the series, perhaps more in this Test. Kohli finally put an end to it by parking Hardik Pandya at short midwicket and asking Delhi mate Ishant Sharma to induce another flick. Before that Amla had stitched 119 runs with Elgar, the third time in this series that South Africa had a partnership of