Ind SA T 1 Day 4: SA Seal It In Fine Fashion After Tendulkar's 46th Test Ton

India always needed a Houdini trick to get out of this mess. For a while Sachin Tendulkar allowed Indian fans to believe the trick was doable, before South Africa resumed order and handed India a defeat by an innings and six runs in the first Test of the India South Africa series at the VCA Stadium in Nagpur.

From two down for sixty-six overnight, the fourth day’s play saw some gumption from the Indians but one man in particular dominated the better part of the headlines for the team. Sachin Tendulkar scored his 46th Test ton but it was not going to be enough to prevent an international embarrassment on a pitch that did not assist or favour one team over another.
The seventy-two run partnership between Murali Vijay and Tendulkar was broken when Vijay for dismissed for thirty-two runs by Paul Harris who persisted with the off stump line. The next partnership was the seventy runs for the fifth wicket in which the Indian captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, tried to change the script as Tendulkar climbed another rung in the statistics column.
But nothing was going to be enough unless a miracle was in the offing. Even Tendulkar perished uncharacteristically to a sweep shot off Harris upon reaching his century to really signal the beginning of the end at at 192 for five.
Wriddhiman Saha held on a second time round, forging consecutive half century partnership with Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan to delay the inevitable. At one point, it looked like India would make South Africa bat for a second time in the match with three wickets in hand but the size of the target was far from promising.
But South Africa were merely awaiting the final fall. They had put in all the hard work, stuck to their guns, and kept relentlessly applying the pressure as a combined bowling force, complemented well by Morne Morkel and Wayne Parnell. Dale Steyn joined Harris for the three wicket lauding as India fell six runs short of watching the visitors bat again, all out for 319.

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