Elgar remained unbeaten on 46 not out at the end of the third day and suffered several nasty blows, including one on the grille of his helmet, during his aggressive innings as the hosts reached 118 for 2 at stumps, a series-level win. 122 runs got away.
Sammons said of Elgar during a media interaction at the end of the day’s play, “He is a competitor. The thing he loves about the game is the competition. The competitive nature of Test cricket brings out the best of them.” ”
“His role will be very important. It will be important to have someone to bat on for the rest of the innings.
“Just having someone with his character for the guys to come, I think it’s massively important. His leadership goes a long way in getting us on the line tomorrow.”
Chasing 240 on a difficult wicket with uneven bounce, the Proteas lost Aiden Markram In the 10th over but with Elgar Keegan Peterson The Indian bowlers in search of a second breakthrough got into a strong fight to leave.
off spinner Ravichandran Ashwin It was finally successful to end a 46-run partnership but Elgar and wicketkeeper-batsman Rassie van der Dussen played the day to remain unbeaten on 46 and 11 respectively.
“The message for people coming in will be to see how the morning plays out and we just have to adapt.
“We have to go through the first hour and play according to the situation. It has been an interesting wicket, not the easiest deck to bat on.”
“It goes without saying that this job is not going to be easy,” he said. The Indian attack has been relentless. But we believe we can chase it. The way we batted this afternoon, it’s all there.
Their batsmen have shown a lot of positive intent after the flop show at Centurion and the batting consultant has blamed it on the lack of enough Test cricket in the last six months.
This was South Africa’s first Test series in six months. He has played only six Tests under the new captain Elgar.
“The basics of Test cricket is about dropping the ball well and in the end it boils down to knowing where your off-stump is. Haven’t played a lot of red ball cricket. So we had to make sure people made contact. Were in with the game.
“It’s about the need to be decisive. It’s something that we discussed at length. We had to come out of any kind of uncertainty.
“It’s always easier said than done. People have come up and shown positive intentions and it’s up to them to see how they went about it,” he said.
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