Pune: Opener Mayank Agarwal and Cheteshwar Pujara stitched together a good, solid partnership to help India recover from the early loss of Rohit Sharma and reach 77/1 at Lunch on the opening day of the second Test against South Africa.
Winning the toss, skipper Virat Kohli didn’t shy away from putting his batters face a tricky session on a damp surface at the Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA) Stadium Thursday.
Both Rohit and Mayank started off cautiously as the Proteas pacers tested them by bowling on probing lines. The duo were kept on their toes before Rohit was shown the door by Kagiso Rabada.
The delivery, pitching on the off-stump line, moved away just a little bit to take the outside edge of Rohit’s bat and Quinton de Kock took an easy catch to bundle the 14-run innings of the Indian opener.
Pujara then joined forces with Mayank and made sure India didn’t lose any further wickets till the end of the session. After seeing off some good overs from the visitors, both the Indian batsmen started feeling a lot more comfortable and played their shots to give some tension to Faf du Plessis. They have stitched an unbeaten 52-run partnership till now and will look to continue in the post-lunch session as well.
At Lunch on Day 1, Mayank and Pujara remained unbeaten on 34 and 19, respectively.
Brief scores: India 77/1 (Mayank Agarwal 34*, Cheteshwar Pujara 19*; Kagiso Rabada 1/16)