Post Card from India: `A team drink for career best'

The first trip we did to India in '96 was a much more difficult tour as we spent 9 weeks here as opposed to the 5 weeks this time. We traveled around India much more taking about 20 flights and often leaving either very early in the morning or arriving at the hotel late into the night. Its not so much the flying but it's the time spent waiting around at the airports and for most trips, to get from one city to the next, you have to go via Bombay, Calcutta or New Delhi.

Fortunately on this tour we have cut down the traveling to a minimum and we can concentrate on the cricket. Spending the first 10 days of the tour in Bombay was also a great bonus.

So far we have played more consistent cricket than last time with the batters not allowing the spin to dominate or build pressure and the seamers doing a good job on wickets which have been primarily prepared to assist the Indian spinners.

In the first test and because it was my debut, I was feeling a little more nervous than normal, because of the tenseness of the game and the noise of the crowds. On the last day when Bouchie went into bat, it was I in next, if either he or Jacques got out. I thought they both played well and my plan was to try and attack in much the same way that they were batting if I had to go in. For South Africa, we knew it was the vital test to win to go one up in the series and now the pressure is on India to level it with us.

Last night as night watchman, my aim was to relax and not really think about the batting that lay ahead today. Today's knock was an opportunity to take advantage of, so I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. Our (Gary and me) plan was to rotate the strike, to try and occupy the crease for a long possible and to keep the scoreboard ticking over. They tried to pressurize us a lot with their appealing and close catchers but we concentrated on each ball at a time and fortunately I managed 85 runs, which is a test CB for me. I suppose I'll have to have a team drink for the career CB at some stage.

Kumble bowled really well. We knew that he would be the main threat and we tried to play more positively against the other two spinners as he would try to hold up one end so we had to take advantage of the others. The bounce of the ball was a bit uneven but thankfully most things went our way.

There was quite a lot of chirping in the middle, especially from the close catchers but the longer we batted out there the quieter they became.

The next few days will be very important for the team to cap off our summer and finish well and thus we would like to win this test series.