The hosts were on a precarious 10 for two at the lunch break with Washington Sundar (five) and Dhruv Jurel (four) in the middle and a tricky chase on the cards. Earlier, Temba Bavuma dragged SA back into the contest with an innings of tremendous grit. Having conceded a first innings lead of 30, SA resumed day three on a precarious 93-7 with the onus on Bavuma to give his bowlers some runs to defend.<\/p>\n
Bavuma replied with a heroic unbeaten 55 – the only fifty by any batter on a minefield of a pitch where inconsistent bounce and spin made life difficult for the shot-makers. Corbin Bosch produced a defiant 25 but once Jasprit Bumrah pegged back his off stump, SA’s tail promptly caved in.
\nBavuma was left stranded after a 136-ball defiance, which contained four boundaries and plenty of determination.<\/p>\n
Chasing a small total to win, India were already short of a batter as skipper Shubman Gill was deemed unfit to bat in the second innings having to retire hurt on Saturday with a neck injury. To make it worse, Marco Jansen claimed two wickets in his first seven deliveries to leave India reeling. Yashasvi Jaiswal fell for a four-ball duck while opening partner KL Rahul made one before he too perished caught behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":15349,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-15348","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"India lost both the openers early in their pursuit for a victory target of 124 on day three of the low-scoring opening test against South Africa (SA) at Eden Gardens on Sunday","published_date":"2025-11-16 00:00:00","news_description":"India lost both the openers early in their pursuit for a victory target of 124 on day three of the low-scoring opening test against South Africa at Eden Gardens on Sunday","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/15348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/15348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19625,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/15348\/revisions\/19625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=15348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}