The luckless bowler
When Lonwabo Tsotsobe bowls, the fielder's fingers evidently start sweating butter. Today, he had another catch put down off his bowling in his very first over. Tsotsobe invited Sehwag to cut with a short, wide, ball and the Indian opener obliged. JP Duminy, standing at point, had to lunge to his left to grab what was admittedly a tough chance. Even though Duminy went with both hands, Tsotsobe was still out of luck, and the chance was spurned. It took Tsotsobe's match tally of dropped catches to four, and his series tally to many more.
The pain
The parade of the walking wounded continued when Gautam Gambhir came out to open the batting despite an injury to his elbow. He must have expected to experience some discomfort but probably didn't think the hurt would come with the first ball he faced from the world's springiest bowler. Morne Morkel was always going to be a threat because of the variable bounce on offer, and he showed that when the first ball he bowled bounced so sharply that as Gambhir tried to take his bat out of the way, it hit his elbow. The sore elbow. The ball flew over the slip cordon and gave Gambhir his first boundary, together with some treatment from the physiotherapist.
The offspinner
South Africa needed a right-arm offspinner to make use of the patch of rough that Harbhajan Singh exploited to such good effect on day four, and Graeme Smith decided he was the man for the job. His first three overs were fairly tight, going for just 14 runs but when he returned for a second spell, it all went a little pear shaped. Three lollipop deliveries were dispatched to the boundary, the first two by Rahul Dravid and the third by Gautam Gambhir, and Smith suddenly had figures of 4-0-27-0. He then went back to fielding.
The effort
Getting Gautam Gambhir out seemed to fire up Dale Steyn considerably and he even though he his next delivery wasn't particularly quick, there was a lot of spark in it. A vicious bouncer that was aimed at VVS Laxman head sailed over the batsman and Mark Boucher to race away for four.
The last hope
With the match clearly petering out to a draw, the captains could have shook hands on a draw with 15 overs left in the day. Instead, South Africa continued in the field and waited for the opportunity to take the second new ball. With ten overs to go, it was optimistic to think that seven wickets would succumb to the new ball. After just one over from Dale Steyn and one from Morne Morkel, enough was finally enough and the series was drawn.