Watch: Morne Morkel bowls the ball of the series to clean bowled Shikhar Dhawan

The day and the innings did not start too well for India as South African pacer Morne Morkel bowled a hostile spell of fast bowling and removed opener Murali Vijay and the new number 3 Rohit Sharma off consecutive balls. But it was the wicket of Shikhar Dhawan that stole the show.

Dhawan who is celebrating his 30^th birthday is also playing at his home ground and must be well aware of the conditions and the best way to tackle it. He did well to stay unbeaten throughout the first session and worked out a fighting partnership with Cheteshwar Pujara. Gabbar was batting on 21 from 85 balls and curbed his instinct of playing the deliveries that were away too far away from his body.

The 86^th ball he faced, last ball of the 29^th over was probably the best ball we have seen in the series. Morkel rushed in a perfect toe-crushing Yorker coming in with the angle, Dhawan tried his best to get the bat in between, but the ball went straight to the roots and banged into his leg-stump. With that, Morkel ended the resistive partnership and also Shikhar Dhawan’s stay at the middle.

Conditions and the pitch were expected to turn in favor of the slower bowlers, but the South African pacers came out on day 2 with a lot of intent, and bowled troubling line to the Indian batsmen, swinging the ball to good effect. They also varied the lengths to keep the batsmen on their toes. At lunch, India were 51/2 and in the second session were soon reduced to 57/4 and it is Morkel who has accounted for 3 of those.

Watch: Morne Morkel bowls the ball of the series to clean bowled Shikhar Dhawan: