South Africa A are four wickets away from victory against India A going into day four at the Tuks Oval.
Picking up from their overnight score of 66-0, they extended their lead to 447 after they declared on 220-5 an hour after lunch. Captain, Aiden Markram and Rudi Second top-scored with 79 and 74 runs respectively, after the early loss of Stephen Cook in the first session on 32. David Miller was the last notable contributor with the bat, making a good cameo when he struck a 29-ball 27, including two boundaries and a six.
India’s Navdeep Saini was the chief destroyer, taking three wickets for 20 in his nine-over spell, with Aniket Choudhary (1-34) and Mohammed Siraj (1-42) chipping in with a scalp each.
It wasn’t easy pickings this time around for the hosts when they took to the field. It took 12.1 overs for the first wicket to fall when Sudip Chatterjee edged the ball to the keeper off Andile Phehlukwayo (2-21) for 20. The young Proteas bowler went on to remove Shreyas Iyer in his follow-up over, nicking him off to Markram at slip for one. The captain could not keep himself out of the match, he showed his agility on the field with the run out of Ravikumar Samarth for 24.
Junior Dala was the other success story of the day, returning figures of 2-35 after accounting for Ankit Bawne and Karun Nair for 46 and 30 respectively. Shaun von Berg once again provided the late strike of the day, removing Ishan Kishan for 39 off 32 balls just before the umpires called stumps.
The visitors were 192-6 (46.5 overs) at the close and need 255 runs to win with Shahbaz Nadeem (24*) and Vijay Shankar (0*) at the crease.
Photo: Lee Warren/Gallo Images
