Stunning Steyn blows India away

With one of the most lethal and joyful spells of pace and swing seen in India, a red-hot Dale Steyn took the pitch out of the equation, and led South Africa to the verge of what should be close to their finest Test victory. He took out two in the morning with conventional swing, and followed it up with a spell of 3.4-2-1-5 with the old ball.

In the lead-up to the Test, Steyn had famously said, "A 150 or 145 km yorker is absolutely no different whether you bowl it here in Nagpur, Chennai, Johannesburg, Perth." Turns out, even if Steyn is not bowling yorkers, but swinging it accurately, at a healthy pace, and when it all comes together in one spell, the pitch matters little.

He set up M Vijay and Sachin Tendulkar immaculately in the morning spell, and came back to wreak havoc post tea. By tea, though, Virender Sehwag and S Badrinath had brought India back with a 136-run stand.

In his first over after tea, Steyn reversed it in towards Badrinath, who couldn't keep it down and chipped to short midwicket. Had the stumps had feet in that spell of play, Steyn's reverse-swing would have still found them. The next three wickets fell bowled to the inswingers, and had Harbhajan Singh not got his back leg in the way, he would have lost his stumps too. This career-best effort from Steyn, 7 for 51, was his 13th five-for in 37 Tests.