Conversations might have been different if Pant got his execution right: Jansen

Guwahati, Nov 24 (PTI) Rishabh Pant is getting a lot of flak for his poor shot selection against Marco Jansen but the South African wrecker-in-chief reckons had the flamboyant keeper got his execution right, the Pant gave Jansen the charge when India were reeling at 102 for 4. The tall bowler had kept it short of length and the ball climbed on Pant, taking the edge into the keeper's gloves.

Asked if he was surprised with Pant's selection of shot, Jansen replied: "It's not that things will always be going your way." "So there are times where Rishabh Pant would have hit that one fifty rows back, straight back over my head and then we would be having a different conversation," Jansen was practical about winning the battle of execution," he told media after the end of day's play.

Jansen had realised early into the Indian first innings that neither there was nip in the air nor off the surface movement, forcing him to try out bouncers which worked well for him on the third day.

Having taken South Africa close to 500 (489) with a superb 93 off 91 balls on day two, Jansen did the star turn with the ball too, by grabbing 6 for 48 in India's paltry first innings score of 201.

Out of his six victims, barring Kuldeep Yadav, other five were out to short balls and he showed the Indian attack what plan B meant on an unhelpful track.

"To be honest, the ball wasn't nipping as much like in Kolkata so we had to figure out a plan. When I got my first wicket (Dhruv Jurel) with a bouncer, we said, 'okay cool, let's see how long this is going to work for' and yeah, it just came off," Jansen said.

While Kuldeep Yadav had termed the Barsapara track as a "road", Jansen gave a divergent view calling it a "sporting one".

"It's a good wicket to bat on. There's good pace, good bounce if you play the short ball well, you'll score runs and if you bowl well, you'll get wickets." However once the ball had gone soft, he didn't come into the attack and only got his last two wickets when the second new ball was taken.

"After that spell of mine, it felt like the ball was a bit softer. It wasn't getting up and it didn't have that zip if it makes sense and then as soon as we took the new ball, the bounce was still there but because it was a new ball it was getting on quite nicely so we tried and use that to our advantage." One very low key point in the whole conversation was the preparation and how training pitches provided in Guwahati resembled the actual match pitch, which is a kind of rarity.

"The training facilities here was very much the same or similar to the playing wicket which I think is very nice as a player because you can sort of prepare well. You can wrap your head around how the wicket might play and because of that, you can maximize on your preparation." How his height became a problem in sub-continental tracks ==================================== Courtesy IPL and other white ball assignments, Jansen has been a familiar Proteas player in the sub-continent but by his own admission, he has struggled to realise his full potential till the ongoing Test.

This is due to the nature of the tracks where he failed to get leg before and bowled due to the bounce he generated through his 6 feet 8 inch frame. "For me, I've always struggled bowling in India whether it was white ball or red ball. I am still jealous of people who get the ball to nip back because like yesterday, it was a perfect example ball goes over off stump because I'm so tall from a different bowler like KG (Rabada) that's hitting top of off, for example so I've always been jealous of those people where they're a bit shorter than me," Jansen humored everyone at his own expense.

"When there's a wicket with a bit of pace and bounce, then I get to extract more out of it so I just think, especially here I've tried to learn what's going to work for me what's going to help me to perform to the best of my ability," he said.

"It's just one of those days where everything clicks and everything works and as a player, those days you take it and you run," he concluded. PTI KHS KHS AT AT