Debasis Sen, Centurion: Indian pacer Mohammed Shami bowled one of the best spells on this tour. His seven over spell, was of the highest quality, as he claimed 3/26. Shami removed AB de Villiers, Dean Elgar and a horribly out of touch Quinton de Kock.
Shami himself looked quite satisfied with his bowling today at Super Sport Park. According to Shami, “Whenever you perform overseas, you will get confidence and you feel good. I don’t count it like this. I just try to perform for my team as much as I can and the best I can do, that will be good for me.”
It was very crucial for the bowlers to restrict the South African batsmen to a low score.
“As you have seen the wicket has been slow since the beginning, even on the first day you saw that it is going low continuously. And even today, it went slow and low and you needed a lot of extra effort. We tried to give 110-120 percent. That was more important for us,” said Shami after the days play.
The fast bowler from Bengal had quite a frustrating phase when he had Quinton de Kock edging him thrice before finally getting him caught behind.
“It is quite frustrating when you see edges flying away from the fielders. So there is a little frustration but you need to be mentally strong at that stage and how long you can persist with it, that is more important,” said Shami.
The slip catching on this tour has left a lot to be desired. On being asked about the catch misses in the slips, Shami said, “It is part of the game that you will drop some catches but we are not robots or machines that we will catch all of them. We can only try and then the rest is dependent on luck.”
Lastly, talking about the state of the match, Shami feel, “The way we started we wanted to bowl in good areas, we had given them 28-run lead. So we wanted to keep them to as low a score as possible and bowl in good areas as much as possible. We have stopped them at a very good target and the rest is about luck.