WAYNE PARNELL and Dale Steyn fought a gallant rearguard action but in the end they had been left with too much to do by an indifferent top order batting performance and finished two runs short in the first ODI against India at Jaipur on Sunday.

Parnell needed two runs off the last ball to tie the match and three to win but was run out attempting the second run that would have given him a maiden international half-century had he been successful.

India thus won by one run with the Proteas needing to win both the remaining matches at Gwalior on Wednesday and Ahmedabad on Saturday to take the series and with it the No. 2 ranking behind Australia.India are currently No. 2.

When Jacques Kallis, who had batted superbly for 89 off 97 balls with 6 fours and 1 six, was dismissed with 74 runs needed off 43 balls with only two wickets left, it looked as though the writing was well and truly on the wall for the Proteas.

Kallis had completed a superb all-round match taking 3/29 in 7, his second wicket being his 250th dismissal in this format of the game.He thus becomes the only cricketer to have 10 000 runs and 250 wickets in both Test and ODI cricket.

With Kallis in such form and leading from the front in the best captaincy style all it needed was one other of the top six to support him in a major partnership to keep the victory charge intact. The Proteas still achieved their game plan of needing to score 150 in the last 20 overs but they had lost too many wickets for that to succeed.

Or so it seemed until Steyn and Parnell came together. Steyn got the show on the road by hitting two sixes off Suresh Raina. There then followed three boundaries off the 48th over from Sreesanth before both batsmen clubbed sixes off Ashish Nehra to leave just 10 wanted off the final over.

Steyn was bowled off the second ball from Praveen Kumar and that was probably the decisive moment.It ended a ninth wicket partnership of 65 in seven overs which was easily a South African record against India, beating the 20 that Nicky Boje and Roger Telemachus achieve in Nairobi more than a decade ago.

The South African bowling was much like the batting: good in parts and very ordinary at other times. One encouraging aspect was the death bowling of Steyn and Charl Langeveldt, an area in which the Proteas have often struggled in the past.

The best discipline by far was the fielding which achieved the levels of excellence and intensity associated with the best Proteas’ teams.