SA - IND series Poisitives

India :
Positives:
Gambhir, he has been lucky or as Borges would say gritty but he has put run on boards facing the deathly spells and new ball bowlers of SA so no small feat
Dhoni, he has also helped laxman and India put runs on board.
The bowling attack: after the first test no one thought we would take 20 wickets, yet we did twice so even if there is a lot of improvement to be made I feel there is a positive as we know we can surely do better. Zaheer was not as effective as he usually is and we are still missing a stable unit but maybe this 13 away tests will be the making or breaking of the Indian bowling attack.
Sreesanth: Good to see him perform like he did, obnoxious brat but a very good natural bowler. If only he had the brains of Zaheer or Kumble!


Negatives:
Sehwag, is it the fast pitches, is it the bounce or his shoulder? We won't really know, hope he rests and comes back with a boom in England I am pretty sure he will fare much better in England
Dravid: Scoring too slowly, losing his wicket to quickly not making any impression on the match.
Pujara: I have been calling him to be in the team for a while but he did not produce much I must admit. I still hope that he gets a few more chances as I really think there is quality in him and he did face some impressive spells.

Overall I am impressed by team India, if they had a few warm up matches I am sure they would have done better in the first test, maybe they would have still lost as the toss in my opinion in that test was very important, but they would have given more of a fight. I also think they should really rest injured players instead of playing them(sehwag). I now put them equal to SA, my worry was can they face the SA bowling attack, of course Laxman and Tendulkar helped a lot, when these two great players go we will be losing a lot.

SA
Positives:
Steyn: but is he really a positive we all know he is a great bowler, the thing is he was in great form and gave all our batsmen huge problems.
Morkel: Steyn must be happy he has Morkel as new ball partner, at 5 wickets per test he is quite valuable! Bowled some deadly spells and like Steyn could easily have finished with more wickets
Tsotsobe: He didn't get many wickets, but got a lot of dropped catches, got plenty of edges and troubled all batsmen, I think SA should persist with him.
Smith's captaincy: I felt that Smith was always very agressive with his field placings maybe he has the bowling for him to do that but he kept India under constant pressure and I must applaud that.

Negatives:
Boucher: not contributing enough with the bat, he could have made the difference in the series.
Harris: 4 Wickets is just not enough, although Indians might have played him too kindly.

SA have two Huge players in Steyn and Kallis, Kallis is a Monster! Kallis will be a big miss for SA when he retires. I think it will be the equivalent of us losing Tendulkar for the SA team. I don't know if they have anyone to back him up.


The four star players in this series are without a doubt : Kallis, Steyn, Tendulkar and Laxman, take one of these players out and the results are different.

I have been lucky to watch a few of the days and must say the bowling by SA was always probing and hard to handle. I am amazed we put up such a fight. Maybe I am exagerating but I haven't seen good bowling like this often. Of course I usually see only ODI's and t20 so that should explain that!