Temba Bavuma had barely finished throwing the last of his celebratory punches into the air when the former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly went on local TV and told the world the Eden Gardens pitch played exactly the way the home team had hoped for.
“The pitch is what the Indian camp wanted. This is what happens when you don’t water the pitch for four days. Curator Sujan Mukherjee can’t be blamed,” said Ganguly, who is the president of the Cricket Association of Bengal, which runs Eden Gardens.
Ganguly left the Indian team’s coach, and a former teammate of his, Gautam Gambhir, no room to disagree. Gambhir admitted the surface, which started breaking up on the first day with balls “exploding” off the top of the surface and where the bounce was also inconsistent, was “exactly what we asked for”.
“The curator here was supportive. I think it’s a wicket that can judge your mental toughness, as those who played with good defence scored runs,” Gambhir said after SA’s 30-run victory in the first Test.
Bavuma scored the only half-century in the match.
“I’m a guy who backs my defence. My game is that simple, where I try and play around my defence,” said the SA captain, who made a technically sublime 55 not out.
The pitch was what SA were expecting, though not as extreme. India clearly ignored their own batters’ shortcomings against spin bowling — reflected in 2024’s 0-3 loss at home against New Zealand — and the Proteas’ success on the subcontinent in the past 12 months.
Many dismissed 2024’s 2-0 series win in Bangladesh as being “only Bangladesh”, but it was a significant victory for the Proteas, as it was a first on the subcontinent in a decade.
The performance in the first Test in Dhaka, on a turning strip, was achieved after Bangladesh won the toss and batted — the exact scenario they, as the home team, wanted. Last month in Rawalpindi, on another dry, spinning surface, Pakistan won the toss, batted and lost to SA.
The Proteas now have experienced spinners, and quite a few of them, who are no longer spooked by subcontinental decks. Simon Harmer admitted that India had left him in a “dark place” in 2015 when spin-friendly pitches embarrassed SA.
He wasn’t the only one. Bavuma opened the batting in the last Test of the series, and four years later, so mentally worn out was then captain Faf du Plessis that he took Bavuma with him to do the toss before the last match of a series in which the Proteas lost all three Tests.
At Eden Gardens, however, Harmer was ripping it square; Keshav Maharaj, though not at his best, still picked up three wickets, and Aiden Markram’s part-time off-breaks picked up the crucial wicket of Washington Sundar in the second innings.
For a country sated by the exploits of great fast bowling, it has taken SA a long time to embrace spinners. “We’ve always had decent spinners, just never a crop of them,” said Shukri Conrad.
“Kesh has been around — it feels like forever — but we’ve also had guys such as Paul Harris, Claude Henderson and Simon Harmer. Because of the Tests we played at home, we rarely played more than one spinner. We were found wanting on the subcontinent.”
Besides coaches and selectors, the players had to undergo a mindset change. Harmer, for example, returned to India in 2016 to work privately with a local coach in Mumbai, and he and Maharaj have learnt to bowl better in India, whether that be controlling length or understanding they didn’t have to turn the ball prodigiously because the pitch would assist them.
Coaches and selectors also understood that the spinners should be trusted, and so the composition of a Proteas team can include three frontline spinners, as was the case in Rawalpindi.
“You’ve got to start showing your belief in spin bowlers as well,” said Conrad. “When Simon called me a few months ago and said he was desperate to play for SA again, I was more desperate to have him back.
“I’m thrilled that we can come here to the subcontinent with a quality pack of spinners. It will do wonders for our game at home as well. Youngsters now have a line of sight. They can see we are keen on spinners as well. It’s not only a fast-bowling country.”
India will have to learn that too. They can no longer go to a venue like Guwahati, where the second Test is to be played, and instruct the groundsman there to prepare a dry, spin-friendly surface.
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