Aiden Markram, You Beauty

In a match which strongly favoured the bowlers, with no batsman in either team able to score 50 in the first innings, Aiden Markram stood man alone in South Africa's second knock. As SA's batsmen continued to fall cheaply, with only Dean Elgar, David Bedingham and Marco Jansen reaching double figures, Markram scored 106, almost double SA's first innings total. When he was finally dismissed, SA's lead was a mere 64. Could the specialist bowlers somehow manage to accumulate enough runs to take SA to an unlikely win?

They added a few more runs, bringing SA's total to 176, to set India a target of 79 for victory. They got there with ease.

South Africa take an unwanted place in the history books as losers of the shortest Test Match ever.

The series was drawn one all.

A Bad Start to 2024 for Team South Africa

The South African cricket team ended 2023 on a high with a big win against India despite captain Temba Bavuma being injured early on and being unable to make a meaningful contribution to the match. For those unfamiliar with the game, players cannot be replaced unless they suffer a concussion. Thankfully he did not.

There were several strong performances by the team with man of the match Dean Elgar scoring 185.

Bring on 2024 and we entered the match with high hopes of giving Elgar a good send-off in his final test before retiring from international cricket.

It's very early in the match, just two hours play in a match which is intended to last five days, but things are not looking good. Elgar's contribution  was 4 with the top scores being Kyle Verrynne's 15 and David Bedingham's 12. In total the team scored 55.

It feels like we've already lost the match.

Update: South Africa have done well to restrict India to a lead of 98 runs. Still a mountain to climb, but there's a little bit of hope.