Has a fast bowling unit ever bowled worse for better reward in a Test Match than India's 3 man pace attack? Zaheer Khan, on his comeback from injury bowled well enough to make early in roads into the South African batting. His two colleagues bowled utter junk for the most part, a lot of it illegal, and some of it without literally collapsing.
Without looking anywhere near his best, Zaheer cause a lot of trouble. His great assets are his control of length and his ability to work a batsman out. I suspect he knows that he has more in his armoury to trouble the left hander than the right hander. This is for a number of interesting reasons. For one, left handers are not used to facing left arm over fast bowling, hence their footwork against the left arm over line of attack is that fatal moment or two slower than it may be against the more conventional right arm over line of attack. As it is, a right arm over bowler, bowling at a left handed batsman has fewer options, because it is harder to attack the left handers stumps from that angle. Both Graeme Smith and Ashwell Prince seemed uncertain about the length, and played at the ball from the crease. This has, to some extent been a feature of all the batsmen in this Test Match - the unwillingness to commit to the front foot.
That in-between length is at and around the 6 metre mark in the pitch map. Bowler it shorter, around the 8 meter mark, and unless you possess genuine pace, a batsman can get onto the back foot and play, as Hashim Amla has demonstrated. Amla seems to be playing on another wicket. A very good batsman in great form, he has that extra bit of time which is priceless on a wicket like this. What this basically means is that he's picking the line and length early and his footwork is certain in response.
There's something distinctly amateurish about Ishant Sharma and S Sreesanth these days. Both of them have developed chronic no ball trouble. Both of them can't hit a line and length. Both of them are utterly unreliable. And both of them celebrate wickets with the same verve that a Dale Steyn might, even though these wickets, unlike Zaheer's or Steyn's are almost entirely accidental. I suppose it could be argued that both Sreesanth and Ishant bowled into the breeze, especially early in South Africa's first innings, and hence struggled with their run ups, but isn't that precisely what an amateur might offer in his defense. This is not the first time in the history of the world that a cricket ground has had a breeze blowing across it.
When they did manage to bowl legal deliveries (they bowled 12 no balls and 1 wide in 17 overs between them), about half the time they were either too short or too wide, or too leg-sidish. The difference between Steyn and Zaheer on the one hand (and I could add Tsotobe to this as well) and Ishant and Sreesanth on the other, is that Steyn and Zaheer can bowl probably a stock delivery in their sleep which will land on a fullish good length, on and around the off-stump, and made the batsman play it watchfully. It is not essentially to push the batsman back to keep him honest in these conditions. When your stock delivery is a bad one, you give your captain a lot to worry about, and you give the opposition 2/83 in 17 overs on a fast bowlers pitch. Keep in mind that South Africa were bowled out for 131 (through a combination of bad luck, bad batting, and great Indian catching to be sure), and then consider that figure the additional fact that 13 of those runs were gifts. 10% of South Africa's total. In all, they conceded nearly 2/3rd of South Africa's runs in about 40% of the overs.
Don't expect anything to change in the second innings. Even though the score reads: India 205 all out & 92/4 v South Africa 131 all out, South Africa are still favorites, because of two factors - Dale Steyn and India's 2nd and 3rd fast bowlers. Harbhajan Singh said bowlers need to pitch it up after yesterdays play. Don't expect the gifted amateurs to listen to the crusty old pro.
Note the difference between Tremlett and Ishant Sharma in the pitchmaps below. The former, especially at Perth, did use the shorter length, but his line was wonderful - he was not bowling short and wide for the most part.