The Wanderers pitch behaved better‚ with less uneven bounce‚ in the first session of day four of the third test on Saturday morning where South Africa survived to reach lunch sitting on 69/1 but still trailing India by 172 runs for victory.

Stumps on Friday was called 20 minutes early over safety concerns following an incident where South African opener Dean Elgar was hit by Jasprit Bumrah’s good-length delivery on the grill of his helmet.

South Africa started the day on 17/1 after they lost opener Aiden Markram cheaply in the third session on Friday but Amla and Elgar fought gallantly in the opening two hours of the day to add 52 more runs to their overnight score.

The Proteas will resume after the lunch break with Amla on 27 off 61 balls and Elgar on 29 off 100‚ and the pair will be looking to improve their promising partnership of 64 runs from 156 deliveries.

Amla scored four boundaries while Elgar scored three to give South Africa hope of going all the way to register a whitewash over their bitter rivals.

Though Amla and Elgar batted bravely‚ the Indian quick bowling quartet of Bhuveneshwar Kumar‚ Ishant Sharma‚ Bumrah and Mohammed Shami did not attack the stumps enough as most deliveries were bowled at short of a length and outside off-stump.

The South African camp will go into the second session high on confidence with AB de Villiers‚ Faf du Plessis‚ Quinton de Kock‚ Vernon Philander and the rest of the tail (Andile Phehlukwayo‚ Kagiso Rabada‚ Morne Morkel‚ Lungisani Ngidi) to come.