Nagpur, March 13: When Tendulkar and Sehwag were on song at the start of the first innings, speedster Dale Steyn was cursing himself for calling Nagpur his favourite hunting ground in a radio interview a day ago.

But the champion bowler that he is, it was just a matter of time that he garnered a vital five-for. The pacer brought South Africa back into the game by helping restrict India to 296 runs - the hosts’ last nine wickets fell for just 29 runs. Deservedly, Steyn was adjudged Man-of-the-Match.

Excerpts from the post-presentation interview.

On restricting India to 296

To be honest with you, with 20 overs to go, we thought that restricting them [India] to 340 would be happy. Restricting them to below 300 was great and when we walked into the dressing room we said that we could actually chase it down.

On coming back into the game as India lost nine wickets for 29 runs

After the first five overs I was looking down the barrel. I think we all pulled it back beautifully. It was a fantastic display by the batters too to reach that total. So overall, a great team performance.

On Nagpur being his happy hunting ground

Yeah, before I arrived here I said in a radio interview that I enjoy this ground. But after the first five overs I was regretting that a little bit. Things worked out nicely in the end.

On the Batting Powerplay which caused India’s downfall

Yeah, we wanted to pick one or two wickets in the Batting Powerplay. But once we picked one, we picked another and that kind of started building the pressure. There was a wave of energy that flowed in the field and we kind of capitalised on that.

On the upcoming matches

Everything seems to be going nicely. We are going to Kolkata next to play Ireland. Hopefully, we can do well there and then in Bangladesh. Right now I am very happy with the performance today.