Dale Steyn's Injury Has Hurt South Africa vs India: Sunil Gavaskar

South Africa, who are already 0-2 down in the Test series against India, have been pushed to the corner in the fourth and final game at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi. Former India skipper Sunil Gavaskar feels the visitors are badly missing Dale Steyn's services and their series loss has lot to do with the fast bowlers' absence.

The Proteas came to India as favourites but Virat Kohli's young guns regrouped after the T20I and ODI series defeats to spring a surprise. Under Kohli, India recorded their first Test series win over South Africa after 11 years. After taking an unbeatable 2-0 lead, India also ended South Africa's nine-year unbeaten series run overseas.

"Surprised to a little extent, but we must not forget that South Africa have lost Dale Steyn, their No.1 bowler. So, that was a big difference because other bowlers were not that experienced," Gavaskar told NDTV.

"Morne Morkel has been to India before but (Kagiso) Rabada and Kyle Abbot were little bit inexperienced," Gavaskar added.

Steyn bowled only 11 overs, during India's first innings at Mohali Test, before a groin injury forced him to warm the South African bench. The visitors' three-pronged pace attack suffered yet another blow when Vernon Philander was ruled out of the series due to an ankle injury after the first Test.

South African Batting Ordinary

While these two major blows hit South Africa hard in their minds, their famed batting line-up too floundered on rank turners in Mohali and Nagpur -- both the matches ended inside three days. In the ongoing Kotla Test too, the visiting team was bowled out for 121 in reply to India 334, courtesy Ravindra Jadeja's five-wicket haul.

"In this series, South African team's batting has lacked application, has lacked patience, has lacked technique and has lacked temperament," he said.

Ajinkya Rahane became the first batsman to reach three figures in this series as he scored his first century at home and his fifth overall on day two. And Gavsakar was happy with the way the Mumbai batsman returned to form.

'Rahane's Innings Marvellous'

"Absolutely a marvellous innings, a typical Test match innings as you would expect to see," he said.

"If they had shown that little bit of application and patience that Ajinkya Rahane showed, then I think the scoreline could have been different as far as the South African batting is concerned.

He also termed the South African batting as 'ordinary'.

"Some of the shots that South African batsmen played today, you can't really blame the pitch. It really has been pretty ordinary batting and to be brutally honest a Poppatwadi team would have done better than their team in batting," he said.