'We didn't get a chance'

Bangladesh's first innings ambled at a slow run-rate of 2.80 in the first Test and the reason behind that was South Africa's accurate bowling. None of Bangladesh's batsmen could free their arms. At the end of the third day, it turned out to be a game of patience at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium yesterday and the visitors' bowling side won that battle.

All of Bangladesh's frontline batsmen -- Shakib Al Hasan, Mushfiqur Rahim and Litton Das -- fell after making significant starts. Of all of the bowlers though, it was spinner Simon Harmer who was the most effective. He bowled cleverly to get the wickets of both Shakib and Litton. While he taunted Shakib with a slightly short delivery which the batsman skied up into the air, he also bowled a beautiful loopy turner to get rid of Litton.

At the end of the day, the spinner said that he enjoyed bowling on the 'deteriorating' track.

"It took me a while to get into things. Pace is a key factor and you can't bowl too much of the same thing," said Harmer at the post-day press conference in Chittagong, when asked how different the wickets in the subcontinent were for spinners compared to the ones back home.

"It was enjoyable bowling on these wickets. I came around the wicket and the ball was still turning. Back home you might not get that sort of purchase from the wicket," he added.

Despite putting in a good performance, the bowler believed that it was still too early to set any targets for this match.

"I think we can't look too far ahead in terms of targets and stuff like that because there is still a lot of cricket left to be played in this game. Our focus is going to be on the first session tomorrow morning.

"Dean [Elgar] and Stiaan [Van Zyl] did a good job in the evening to go unscathed in that last session, especially with the bad lighting and the rain. I think the first session [on Thursday] is going to be our target tomorrow and not too much past that," said Harmer.

"They [Bangladesh] batted well. A couple of their players batted really well. They didn't give us any chances. It's not like we were dropping a lot of catches or anything like that.

"Our seamers did a phenomenal job by setting the tone this morning and even if you are not going to be bowling teams out, you don't want them to be scoring at par run-rate, but they did that phenomenally well. I think what we bowled them out for is a respectable total," he concluded.