AB de Villiers and Jacques Kallis hit contrasting centuries to build on the platform laid by the openers Hashim Amla and Loots Bosman to charge South Africa to a powerful 365 for 2 in the third ODI in Ahmedabad.
Bosman was feisty, Amla was elegant, de Villiers was aggressive and Kallis and well Kallis, solid as ever. Together the top-order have blasted South Africa to their highest score against India.
Hashim Amla built his elegant half-century around the aggressive knock from Loots Bosman to push South Africa to a healthy position at the half-way mark on a flat, dry pitch in Ahmedabad.
If Amla applied the calm touch, Bosman provided the initial momentum at the top of the innings to potentially set up the visitors for a big total. If you had to pick a word to catch the spirit of Bosman's innings, it would have to be thump. It was filled with several crunchy blows but what really caught the eye was that he never went across the line. There were no heaves and there were definitely no slogs but it was an innings where he kept thumping them in the V. There were 11 boundaries in all but his first boundary, perhaps, was the sweetest of them all. He was just on 1 and the confidence to go for the big aerial hits hadn't yet sunk in and he just leaned forward to play a gorgeously timed on-the-up drive past the bowler Sreesanth.
However, it was in the sixth over that he really got up and running with three boundaries - punch over mid-on, a fierce flick, and a feisty cut - against the errant Sudeep Tyagi. From then on, it seemed Bosman was just playing a Pro20 game. The head was still, the bat swing went cleanly through the line of the delivery and there was no trace of any self-doubt. Ravindra Jadeja was lifted over long-off and Yusuf Pathan was dispatched over long-on but he fell, slicing Yusuf to long-off. Credit must be given to the bowler for not firing it through but instead retaining the flight and for having slowed up the pace.
If Bosman thumped, Amla was all wristy elegance. He seemingly wristed even those on-the-up punchy shots through the off side where other batsmen would have used their arm a lot more but his best shot was a flicked boundary off Sreesanth - it was a short-of-length delivery on the off stump but Amla used the length to wrist it to the square-leg boundary. Unlike in the last ODI where the stiff target didn't allow him to pace his innings properly, he showed better judgement today: he sensed Bosman's confidence was on the rise and started to rotate the strike around and when Bosman fell, he realised he had to stay on for a big innings and started to work the angles for the singles.
For their part India, quickly realised that pace, especially considering their inexperienced seamers, was not the way to go on this flat dry track and relied on spin and even the medium-pace of Virat Kohli. It's going to be that kind of a pitch where change of pace and spin would be the key.
