'It played nicely into our hands' - Dean Elgar feels India's reaction to DRS incident benefited South Africa

South Africa Test skipper Dean Elgar feels that the DRS incident took a toll on Indian players and their bowling efforts. He was adjudged LBW by the on-field umpire Marais Erasmus but was overturned by the third umpire via DRS. Ravi Ashwin’s delivery had hit the lower half of Elgar’s pads on first impression but the ball-tracking predicted that the ball would’ve missed the stumps.

This created a huge disappointment among the Indian cricketers out there in the field and even the umpire was surprised. In a moment of frustration, the Indian skipper Virat Kohli vent his frustration on the stump mic. He took a dig at the host broadcaster along with Ravi Ashwin and KL Rahul as well.

According to Dean Elgar, this helped South Africa managed take advantage of the situation. He and Keegan Peterson scored some quick runs and reduced the required runs significantly.

They forgot about the game, says Dean Elgar

Elgar mentioned India took a lot of pressure when they were outplayed and it led to their downfall as well. He went on to add that the emotions in the team had created a lot of freebies from Indian bowlers for the batters. The 34-year-old added that he was quite happy to have had the incident as it helped them to win the series 2-1.

“It was maybe a team under a bit of pressure and things weren’t going their way, which they are quite used to of late . It was a bit of Test match cricket pressure which gave us a little bit of a window period to score freer and chip away at the target.

“It played nicely into our hands that for a period of time, they forgot about the game and they were channeling a bit more of the emotional side of what Test cricket has to offer. I am extremely happy it happened that way.” Elgar said as quoted by ESPNCricinfo

The South African batters should be given credit as well for chasing down 200 plus scores twice in two Tests in the fourth innings against a quality Indian pace attack.