India have beaten South Africa by seven wickets at Newlands, with the game ending as the shortest completed match in Test history, in terms of balls bowled.
India needed to chase down 79 within 14.1 overs to overtake the 1932 Test between Australia and South Africa, at the MCG, as the shortest game ever. With a pump over mid-on for four from Shreyas Iyer, they reached the target in 12 overs exactly to set a new world record.
That 1932 game finished in 656 balls, with Australia winning by an innings despite making only 153. South Africa were shot out for 36 and 45. Their first-innings 55 in the Newlands Test was their lowest score since that game. Mohammad Siraj took 6-21 in an electric opening spell to set the tone for a ball-dominated game, with inconsistent bounce, appreciable sideways movement and some excellent pace bowling making batting a nigh-on impossible task at times.
Other landmarks in the game included the most dramatic collapse in Test history, with India losing six wickets for no runs to end their first innings, the first time six wickets have fallen on the same score. Kagiso Rabada, Nandre Burger and Lungi Ngidi each claimed three wickets to keep South Africa within 100 runs of India, though the 121 runs put on by Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill and Virat Kohli before the collapse would prove decisive.
In reply, Aiden Markram played an innings of style and substance, notching a century remarkable on several fronts. Markram scored at above a run a ball, and the next highest score in the innings was 12 – the lowest next-best score in an innings to include a hundred. CricViz rated the conditions as the toughest for a century in their database.
Of the 1096 Test Hundreds with ball tracking available, none have been tougher than Aiden Markram’s at Newlands according to our Expected Runs and Wickets model, with an Expected Average of just 16.6 during his innings. #SAvIND
— The CricViz Analyst (@cricvizanalyst) January 4, 2024
Six wickets from Jasprit Bumrah kept the chase in reach, but Markram’s knock had given the Proteas some hope of snatching a series win. India opted to attack in the chase, with Yashasvi Jaiswal hitting two of the first three balls for four and edging the other short of the slips. He top scored with 28 off 23, Rohit batted through for 17, Gill and Kohli each reached double figures, and Shreyas Iyer finished things off with a boundary.
After an innings defeat in the first Test, victory has given India a share of the series.
