Mentor and protégé started a fresh day with renewed caution, and took their time settling in. In fact Kallis looked nowhere near as brilliant as he was the previous day. This was a fantastic opportunity to notch up a maiden double hundred for one of the greats of the modern game, but Kallis managed to add only 14 to his overnight total of 159, after consuming as many as 61 balls. He fell for 173, inside-edging a quicker one from Harbhajan onto pad and into the hands of Murali Vijay at short leg. Meanwhile, Amla continued to try and force the pace as the Proteas chugged along at a less-than-impressive runrate of 3 per over or thereabouts.

The Indians were on the backfoot before the start of the match itself as VVS Laxman did not recover fully from his finger injury, and his replacement Rohit Sharma managed to deny himself a debut by picking up an injury on the morning of the match. This meant Dhoni was left with only 5 fit specialist batsmen in the squad apart from himself and was forced to go for reserve keeper Wriddhiman Saha. There was rich irony in the two debuts being made as Subramaniam Badrinath got his chance after banging on the door for close to half a decade, and Wriddhiman Saha was gifted the berth b y a freak quirk of fate.

There is little doubt that the rivalry between South Africa and India is, with the passage of time, going to become just as fierce (on the field) and committed as those between the Proteas and Australia and England. "We have had some high profile series wins in England and Australia over the last period of time," commented captain Graeme Smith, "and it will be a real feather in our cap if we can add a series win in India to our list."

The series is, of course, taking place against the background of India and South Africa being ranked No. 1 and 2 in the world on the ICC Reliance Mobile Test rankings and the India media has already dubbed it "the World Championship of Cricket" (or WCC for short). What will give the Proteas a lot of confidence is the fact that their previous four Test victories in India have been based on very strong batting performances by the top six backed up by the striking power of the pace bowlers.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni's side enters the series in number-one position, leading Graeme Smith's side by four ratings points. But the home side will drop to second if the Proteas win the series by 1-0 or better. But India just needs to draw the series to retain the number-one position and the mace which it had snatched from South Africa on 6 December after defeating Sri Lanka by 2-0.

Although Bangladesh will host England and Australia will travel to New Zealand for two Tests series before the 1 April cut-off date, the result of those two series will have no impact on the number-one position.