Player of the match Bhuvneshwar Kumar feels that while South Africa’s ploy to unsettle Indian batsmen with short-pitched balls backfired, the key to India’s success in the first T20 international was changing the pace and bowling slower deliveries at the Wanderers.

Kumar grabbed his maiden five-wicket haul in T20 internationals to help India win by 28 runs after restricting South Africa to 175-9 in 20 overs on Sunday.

“What I was trying to do is bring about change of pace in my bowling. I just wanted to take the pace off the ball because I knew it won’t be easy to hit the ball and that’s what I did. The important thing is how you mix your deliveries according to the wicket,” Kumar said after the match.

“For instance, today we bowled a lot of slow balls. It was a part of our strategy on this wicket, to do away with pace and make it difficult for the batsmen to score. Apart from line and length, it’s important to understand how you want to mix your deliveries. It matters. Today, for instance, it was about bowling slow,” he added.

Kumar became the first Indian pacer to pick up five wickets in each format of the game with his 5 for 24 in the first T20.

Asked about his five-wicket haul, Kumar said, “Taking wickets means a lot to me when you play for your country. It doesn’t matter if you take five wickets or how many as long as you’re winning matches for your country. That’s what matters and taking fifers in every format feels good. I want to do it as long as possible.”

Shikhar Dhawan scored 72 off 39 balls as India raced to a big score in Powerplay overs. The visitors finished with 203/5, their highest total in T20 cricket against South Africa. This was despite the Proteas targeting India with a short-ball strategy.

Kumar had much to say about this move. “Whenever India goes abroad, the reputation is that India are not good at batting against short bowling. This time we haven’t seen that thing. We have really tackled it well. Today they bowled five to six overs of short bowling to us early on and it really backfired on them.

“Whatever the reputation we had, in the last few years we are playing totally opposite of that. We have managed the short ball pretty well on this tour. They wanted to bowl short but it didn’t really work well for them,” he said. “Something doesn’t work for you, you have to come up with something else (a plan B, but they didn’t). So that’s what probably worked to our advantage,” he added.

Batting first helped bowlers’ cause

Kumar also said batting first on the Wanderers pitch gave them ample idea about the nature of the wicket and it helped when they returned to defend their total. “After we batted, we had a certain idea of the kind of wicket we would be bowling on after what we saw. But the whole picture begins to emerge only after you’ve bowled because it depends on the bowlers,” he said.

“Look at their bowlers they’re of a different height and have different skill sets. So you get an idea but as I said, the whole thing emerges only after you’ve bowled a few balls. For instance, if I’ve bowled the first over, I can communicate with the rest of the bowlers on what’s happening on the wicket, like that,: he added.

The pacer also said that the win was a result of team work.

“It was a complete performance from us. When we went in there, we knew what we wanted to do as best as a bowling team,” said Kumar. “We lost the first two Test matches and then we came back. The momentum was on our side and if momentum is on your side, you have got to make it count. Credit has to go the Indian team for the way we have played in every department,’ he said.

With inputs from PTI