Debutant left-arm spinner Paul Harris is treated like Shane Warne by two of the best batsmen in the world, the Indian scorecard shows two runouts on probably their most crucial Test innings on this tour, umpire Asad Rauf loses count and the last Indian wicket falls on the seventh ball of an over.Grind all that together, throw in those 156 runs that South Africa now need for a series win with eight wickets in hand, and stir it up with that inexplicable decision to make Virender Sehwag open again. This is the strange mixture that millions of Indian cricket fans, who live and die with their team, would have gulped down today.And then, as they are always known to do, wake up on the morning of the final day of the third Test, still smarting, and hope for an Indian win.Once again, they will ignore the fact that the celebrated batting line-up crumbled like the Newlands surface, from 114 for three to 121 for six. They will simply shrug and forgive their ‘Dada’, Sourav Ganguly, for throwing it away from the verge of what could have been his greatest Test knock. They will also wish away those bizarre 88 minutes when Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar scored just 25 against No 5 bowler Jacques Kallis and rookie Harris.Instead, they will cling on to the long rope of hope, thrown by the tiring veteran Zaheer Khan with the scalp of AB de Villiers, and the “old man” Anil Kumble with that last wicket of Hashim Amla. Can India pull it off, they will ask? Maybe, just once, they will also ask themselves the real question: do they deserve to?For the answer, let’s begin from the start. From the time Sehwag walked in to bat with Wasim Jaffer, flicked his first ball to the squareleg fence, left the next alone, and slashed hopelessly at the wide, third one from Dale Steyn — goodbye, once again.If the team thinktank protected him from the new ball in the first innings, give him a chance in the middle order to play his stroke, they simply took a u-turn, when he actually would have been useful down the order this time. How could you dismantle an opening pair, even makeshift, which had put in 153 runs in the first innings?Two balls later, Jaffer’s century glow was quickly stubbed out by a fabulous Makhaya Ntini special that pitched outside off, and came in, and in and in. Jaffer wanted to leave it, pulled his bat out of the way, only to find the ball following his hands like a guided missile, take the edge.At six for two, you couldn’t wonder whether what followed in the dressing room was confusion over delayed instructions, or just plain panic. But then, there was Ganguly and, with him was Dravid. Once good friends, now reconciled teammates, the two slowly calmed those rattled nerves, then put up one of the best Indian partnerships of this series, as valuable in substance as that opening stand on Tuesday.If Ganguly off-drove Steyn imperiously, Dravid went down to smash Ntini to the cover fence. If Ganguly pulled Ntini, virtually from the front foot, Dravid caught up with a rasping square cut. Both worked the gaps like old pros, too, and the tension eased up.But the big difference, which was so painfully obvious later on, was the way Ganguly used his feet and mind to play Harris, who was doing an Ashley Giles here, bowling from over the stumps, into the leg-stump rough. Before you knew it, 83 runs were on the board for the fourth wicket and the former captain had finally sealed the comeback debate with this 46.But then came the first blow, in the seventh over after lunch, when Ganguly stretched his bat out, and steered Kallis to Gibbs at gully. And so began the misery of Tendulkar and Dravid versus Kallis and Harris.The top two pushed and prodded, played Kallis like he was Glenn McGrath, poked at Harris from the crease, letting both dominate, pile on the pressure. While Dravid scored 14 runs in over an hour, Tendulkar, battling a “slight strain on his left buttock”, stuttered to 11. Not a single boundary, not a flicker of aggression, Kallis 8-0-15-1, Harris 13-4-28-1. And India crawled.Obviously, all the pressure was bound to tell. And it did. Dravid gone, chipping Harris back, Laxman run out, struggling to reach the crease on an easy second run, and Tendulkar out, umpire Asad Rauf ending his agony, handing out another dodgy lbw decision.At 121 for six, how can you point your finger at the rest then for the final total of 169, especially when Dinesh Kaarthik came up with a little gem, showing the “seniors” through his unbeaten 48-ball 38 how it needed to be done. He rocked back to cut Shaun Pollock; he swept, then reverse-swept Harris to bits; he had Kallis glowering in frustration.Again, at 121 for six, do India deserve that win? Do ask yourselves his question, even when you reach for the champagne.
