India walked into Raipur with the kind of platform teams dream of in one-day cricket. Virat Kohli and Ruturaj Gaikwad, locked in rhythm and feeding off each other, stitched together a classy 195-run stand that lifted India to 284 for 3 by the 39th over. The pitch looked true, the bowlers looked tired, and the innings seemed to be cruising towards a total that would touch or even cross the 370 mark.

And then, almost without warning, the gears jammed.

Kohli and Gaikwad fell in quick succession, and with their exit the clarity and fluency of India’s innings left too. What followed was another reminder of a problem that has trailed India through this ODI series against South Africa: the lack of a reliable, game-shaping finisher at the back end of the innings. India scraped together only 74 r

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