South Africa recover to reach 299/5 at stumps

DURBAN: Kallis remained on course for a farewell hundred, and with the help of AB de Villiers, who conjured a 50-plus score for the 10th Test in a row, took South Africa to a solid position before rain and bad light stopped play an hour after tea.

India took three early wickets, before Kallis and de Villiers got together and stopped the rot with a 127-run stand.

De Villiers was the more fluent of the two as Kallis, took his time to settle down.

He played a sluggish innings getting to 78 off 224 balls before play came to a halt.

The one bright spot in the Indian attack was Ravindra Jadeja who, in his first Test as the lead spinner, put an end to discussions over whether he should have been picked ahead of R Ashwin and Pragyan Ojha.

He finished the day 4-87 off 37 tight overs.

Progress had been more brisk in the morning from South Africa, before Jadeja's bounce provided the first wicket of the morning. Graeme Smith looked to smash the ball over the leg side, but it hit high on the bat and swirled to midwicket, where Shikhar Dhawan sprinted back and safely collected the ball as it fell over his shoulder.

Hashim Amla's failed again as he played down the wrong line to a Mohammed Shami delivery to lose his offstump, and off the very next ball, the set Alviro Petersen was surprised by the bounce from Jadeja to glove a catch to first slip. Again, it was a sharp catch, with M Vijay diving forward to pouch a low chance. South Africa had lost three wickets for 10 runs and had two new batsmen in the middle,

There was only a small crowd in considering it was an early start, but they made plenty of noise as Kallis walked out to bat and was greeted by a guard of honour from India. The emotion of the moment didn't seem to affect Kallis, as he set about thwarting India's bowlers.

He was helped by the off-colour India attack. Ishant Sharma was back to his profligate self, providing gifts on the leg stump, and Zaheer wasn't able to consistently threaten either. Shami was the pick of the medium-pacers, getting the ball to regularly reverse in and constantly hitting speeds near 140kph.

Though they take the points for the day's play, South Africa's batsmen would have to find a better balance between caution and aggression when they take the crease tomorrow if they want to fulfil de Villiers' hopes of a lead of 100 and a subsequent series win.