Pacer Kyle Abbott bowled his heart out with figures of 5/40 in the fourth Test against India, but the individual bright spots haven’t been able to save South Africa in this series.
Pacer Kyle Abbott bowled his heart out with figures of 5/40 in the fourth Test against India, but the individual bright spots haven’t been able to save South Africa in this series.
On Saturday, they went through a torrid time in the field with India building on their 213-run lead to reach 190/4 in their second innings. South Africa had made 121 in their first innings.
Abbott said South Africa had expected India to put them to bat in the last session.
“To be quite honest, the longer they bat, the happier we are. More overs are taken out of the game. I thought they’ll have a crack at us tonight, maybe an hour or so. But obviously not.
“They want to drag it out. If that’s the case, it’s going to take more overs out for us to bat in the end,” Abbott said at the end of day’s play.
He was all praise for fellow pacer Morne Morkel, who bowled a scorching yorker to scalp Shikhar Dhawan on the day.
Was that the best delivery of the series “That’s a tough one. Like I said, it was out of the box thinking so from that point of view it was. But I think there have been some better ones. We got someone, I think it was Vijay, with a reverse swinging ball that hit him on the back leg and he bowled Rohit with a beauty. I think there were a few but from a plan, and out of the box thinking, this was probably right up there,” Abbott said.
