Virat venerated, Kagiso conspicuous | Cricbuzz.com

Virat Kohli twitched a nostril. The India-supporting part of the crowd, many of them ranged on both sides of the staircase that connects Centurion’s players’ balcony to the boundary, roared. Kohli rose, carrying his helmet in one hand and his bat in the other, and began descending the steps.

The crowd reached for a louder noise, sucked it in, and let it loose like a motorcycle blasting past a cemetery at 4am. Rohit Sharma had become the first wicket of the Test series two balls earlier, when Kagiso Rabada rushed him into a hook and a catch at long leg. Best India’s No. 4 get himself down there and into the dugout, ready to go.

There are 48 stairs between the players’ balcony and the boundary at this ground, and the crowd built ever higher, thicker, denser walls of sound around Kohli with each of his downward steps. Suddenly it was apparent that the fencing alongside the staircase had been raised, using steel barricades of the type deployed to control public protests, from the original waist height to taller than most people would be if they stood with their arms stretched upward. The reason why that had been done was just as suddenly apparent.

Kohli, king of cricket, icon of the age, scion of his society, needed protection from those who adored him. So did India’s other players. But no-one in cricket is Kohli. As he disappeared into the smothering tunnel of love, looking neither left nor right nor betraying any semblance of acknowledgement of what was happening all around, it was difficult not to feel sorry for him.

But that lasted only until Kohli broke free into the muggy morning below and back into probably the most real world he knows. He was in the dugout for much of the 21 minutes that passed between the dismissals of Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal, whose flaccid drive and consequent catch behind earned Nandre Burger’s first Test wicket – the cue for Gerald Coetzee to, in the cause of offering his congratulations, bound whooping and yawping with joy from fine leg to the middle with all the enthusiasm of a young father seeing his six-year-old child score a goal.

Kohli fended and flicked, unsuccessfully, the last two balls of Burger’s over, then had to wait for four more deliveries before he could take a first crack at the bowler who would sway Tuesday’s play. Two scoreless deliveries later the anointed one, Rabada, was six overs into his day’s work.

At his best Rabada bowls on another planet in a galaxy far, far away from others. He glides to the crease and into an action that is its own reaction; a triumph of mind over muscle. Tuesday was such a day. He took 5/44 in India’s 208/8, and bowled as well as that sounds.

“I was focused in my training; I knew what I wanted to get out of it,” Rabada said. “Days like this happen in cricket. Sometimes you get the ball in the right area and you’re not so successful. Today was just my day. Sometimes it just happens that way.

“All week the ball’s been coming out nicely, so I came into the match quite confident. I’m just glad the focused work, the hard work, paid off. My body and my mind were feeling good coming into this Test series.”

Even so, before lunch Rabada dropped short too often, dulling the edge of the seam and swing on offer on a pitch spiced by the fact that it had spent close to 40 hours under cover because of the 51 millimetres of rain that had fallen in Centurion in the 36 hours before the match was due to start. Burger aside, the rest of South Africa’s attack also failed to penetrate as much as they should have, perhaps because the Indians were wise to the plan of stacking the on-side field and bowling short on middle and leg.

India weren’t in the best shape at 91/3, but Rabada had had Shreyas Iyer dropped by Marco Jansen at point followed five deliveries after that by Tony de Zorzi at square leg spilling Kohli off Burger. Things, then, could have been worse for the visitors.

South Africa had also suffered a setback. Temba Bavuma left the field in the seventh over before lunch with a left hamstring strain sustained while chasing a ball. His condition will be monitored to determine the chances of him staying in the match. A similar injury struck Bavuma during the World Cup. But in that instance it was his right hamstring, so this is not a recurrence of a half-healed injury. Rather, questions will be asked about Bavuma’s match fitness: he missed a first-class game, his only competitive cricket between the World Cup and the first Test, because of a bereavement.

Dean Elgar, who was replaced by Bavuma as captain in February, took back the leadership. How much was South Africa’s change of approach after lunch – when they reverted to a more conventional line outside off-stump – due to Elgar and how much to a team and coaching staff effort cannot be known. But it worked: India lost 3/57 in the next hour.

“Seeing that we have two left-armers in our attack, we generally tried to swing the ball in [to the right-handers], and with the bounce we could extract from the wicket it seemed like that was the tactic to go with at the time,” Rabada said. “Temba had a gut feel about the best way to get wickets. It did make sense to have the leg slip – it almost worked to Virat; he got dropped at square leg. After lunch we had to change tactics. We re-adjusted and looked to bowl channel.”

Rabada asserted his class with the sixth ball of the second session, which zagged past Iyer’s inside edge and bowled him. Four overs after that Rabada angled a full delivery towards Kohli’s off stump. It veered away just enough to lure even a modern great into a stroke, which he edged behind.

“It just swung away late,” Rabada said. “Most of the time he covers that channel or plays and misses. He’s a fantastic player, and against him you really have to be on. So I’m glad I got the fainty there.”

At the end of every successful over Rabada returned to rousing cheers from the crowd beyond his section of the boundary. They were stationed not many metres from Kohli’s crowd, and were quickly competing with them. So when Kohli climbed back up those 48 stairs, this time to the same cold, indifferent silence that blighted India’s matches at the World Cup whenever the opposition did something worthy of any crowd’s appreciation, the Rabada rowdies hit full volume.

“KG is better than Kohli,” came the rising refrain. Fair enough, but matters took a turn towards ugly after Rabada hit Shardul Thakur on the elbow, which was followed by Coetzee smacking him on the helmet. To the tune of the chorus from The Cranberries’ Zombie, spectators behind Rabada sang, “He’ll hit your head… hit your head… KG! KG! KG!”

If Rabada heard that, he didn’t say: “Summer vibes in South Africa and cricket season is always awesome. I’m not sure how many beers they were down, but I think quite a few. They were having a great time at the cricket and it’s so lovely to see.

“I had to pinch myself at a stage. It was basically a packed house. The last time we played a Test here, against West Indies [in February and March], it was nowhere near half-full. Before that we played against India [in December 2021 during lockdown] and there was literally no-one in the stands. So it’s great to see. Festive season in South Africa is fantastic, and I felt that vibe.”

A looming bank of angry grey cloud that had built up behind the ground’s only stand had taken away enough light nine overs after tea for play to be suspended, and the deluge that followed put paid to the day. KL Rahul’s fighting innings, an alloy of utter defence and outright attack that has taken him to 70 not out, will be central on Wednesday morning. But it won’t dim the spotlight on Kohli and Rabada.