India and South Africa are playing the second Test of India’s tour of South Africa at The Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg. India won the toss and elected to bat. KL Rahul is the captain of the Indian team in the absence of Virat Kohli, who had an upper back spasm and was ruled out of this game. Rahul became the first Indian captain since Mohammad Azharuddin in 1990 to lead a Test team before leading in limited-overs cricket.
Rahul and Mayank Agarwal opened the batting for India. They both added 36 runs for the first wicket before Marco Jansen dismissed Agarwal for 26 runs off 37 deliveries. Pujara, who came out to bat next tried looked off-colour and was dismissed by a peach by Duanne Olivier in the 24th over for just 3 runs.
Rahane came out to bat after Pujara was dismissed for a first ball duck. The old problem of poking at the ball outside off brought his downfall. At the time of writing, India are tottering at 157-6.
After Kohli was ruled out of the match, India all went in with horses for courses strategy. They had an option of picking either Shreyas Iyer or Hanuma Vihari in this game. Iyer scored a century on debut against New Zealand, but India went in with Vihari.
The reason Vihari was picked is that he was a part of India A squad that toured South Africa before this ongoing series. The team played three Test matches on that tour and Vihari was the leading run-scorer for India A as he made 227 runs in five innings at an average of 75.66.
Meanwhile, the Twitterati was not impressed by another poor show by the senior players, Pujara and Rahane and lashed out at the duo for yet another failure.
Test batting average since February 2019:
— Nic Savage (@nic_savage1) January 3, 2022
Mitchell Starc - 30.54
Cheteshwar Pujara - 26.86#SAvIND
Test batting average since February 2019:
— Nic Savage (@nic_savage1) January 3, 2022
Mitchell Starc - 30.54
Cheteshwar Pujara - 26.86#SAvIND
I think Pujara & Rahane have become Purane.
— Ramesh Srivats (@rameshsrivats) January 3, 2022
Thank You #PURANE ♥️🤝 pic.twitter.com/YhpIxYKdiO
— Dr Khushboo 🇮🇳 (@khushbookadri) January 3, 2022
Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane has failed to perform on a consistent basis since 2020. Failures after Failures. 😑
— Nitesh Chauhan 🇮🇳 (@Nitesh_Chauhan7) January 3, 2022
Whole India to Them:#SAvIND pic.twitter.com/wuZclzRPBU
Amazing content pic.twitter.com/6PCGD7fKPB
— MGT ERA🇮🇳 🇿🇦 #PuraneOut (@awkdipti) January 3, 2022
They are calling duo of Pujara and Rahane as Purane. Bhai yaar😭😭🤣🤣 https://t.co/SJcDZLGUES
— Silly Point (@FarziCricketer) January 3, 2022