We stuck at it brilliantly, says ten Doeschate

India assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate praised Kuldeep Yadav’s fine spell that gave the home team an early foothold in a must-win game against South Africa on the opening day of the second Test here on Saturday.

“I thought we stuck at it brilliantly. Just when the game was slipping away a couple of times, we managed to get a foothold back into the game,” said ten Doeschate.

“Bumrah’s wicket (Aiden Markram) before the first break and Kuldeep’s straight after (Ryan Rickelton), and then that last wicket (Tony de Zorzi) at the end of the day probably makes it more or less an even day.

I think it was just good old-fashioned attritional Test cricket and both sides accounted for themselves very well.”

Commenting on Kuldeep’s performance, he added, “We know Kuldeep’s strike rate is phenomenal as it is, and that’s why we’re picking. I thought everyone bowled well. But maybe the fact that he gets overspin and with the red soil and a little bit more pace in the wicket, it was slightly more effective in the conditions today.”

The former Dutch international felt that the bowlers did not allow any South African batters to get to big scores, which could come in handy later in the game.

“I thought the one thing we did really well was make sure that none of them got a big score. And that’s one point of difference we can have in the second innings. I guess on the flip side of that, they all got in.

So they didn’t really lose wickets in clumps. But we bowled well and kept the pressure on for long periods. When scoring is not that easy, you know, when you can only really score off bad balls, it adds pressure onto the batting units.