With the limited-overs fixture done and dusted, it’s time for Team India to shift their focus to the big task at hand — conquering the ‘Final Frontier’.
India have won a Test series in each Full Member nation since making their debut in 1932 save one — South Africa. The Indians had toured the ‘Rainbow Nation’ for the first time in 1992-93 under Mohammad Azharuddin’s leadership, and since then the best result they could manage in that country in the five-day format was a 1-1 draw in the 2010-11 tour.
The difficulty of beating the Proteas in their own backyard can be gauged from the fact that it took the Indians 14 years to win a Test on South African soil, with Rahul Dravid’s mean finally ending the winless run with a 123-run victory in Johannesburg during the 2006-07 tour.
Even Virat Kohli, India’s most successful Test captain of all time, couldn’t snap the jinx while leading the Indian team in the tours of 2017-18 and 2021-22, in which the visitors ended up losing 1-2 on both occasions.
#TeamIndia members are here at the SuperSport Park, as they gear up for the 1st Test against South Africa.#SAvIND pic.twitter.com/NEKEpSqL7s
— BCCI (@BCCI) December 24, 2023
India arrived in South Africa two years ago as the heavy favourites, and were on the verge of lifting the curse after beating Dean Elgar’s men convincingly in the first Test in Centurion by 113 runs, only for the Proteas to bounce back with consecutive seven-wicket wins.
That series proved to be Kohli’s final assignment in charge across formats, and this time it’s Rohit Sharma who’s been tasked with the responsibility of achieving the feat that has eluded the Indians for more than three decades now.
Lack of quality practice could hurt Rohit and Co
What could, however, cost the Indian team in the upcoming series is the fact that they will be returning to the Test arena for the first time in nearly half a year, and without much practice.
The last time the Indian team played red-ball cricket was in the Caribbean back in July, where young opener Yashasvi Jaiswal and pacer Mukesh Kumar got their international careers off to superb starts, with the former slamming 171 on debut in Roseau. Since then, the Indian team focus, as well as those of the other Test-playing nations, shifted to the white-ball formats with special focus on ODIs to prepare for the World Cup in India.
With the ODI World Cup behind them, the focus then moved to the 20-over game with next year’s T20 World Cup in mind and the Men in Blue would go on to beat Australia 4-1 in a five-match series at home. That would be followed by three T20Is and as many ODIs against the Proteas in the ongoing tour. India would bounce back to level the T20I series 1-1 before winning the ODI leg 2-1.
The only bit of red-ball practice that the Indians are have got however, is an intra-squad match at the Tuks Oval in Pretoria, where top-order batter Shubman Gill helped himself to a hundred. That is the only bit of warm-up that Rohit and Co are going to get before taking on Temba Bavuma’s men in the first Test that takes place at Centurion’s SuperSport Park starting Tuesday.
Read: Rahul ‘very confident’ about keeping wickets in Tests, says coach Dravid
Will that be enough for Team India, though? They are, after all, going to face a team that they’ve never beaten away from home in a bilateral Test series. And for more than two-and-a-half-decades, India had not even won an ODI series — bilateral or triangular — on South African soil, ending the jinx in 2018 with a 5-1 victory.
South Africa, thus, is established as one of the tougher places to tour for the Indian team, which in a way extends to the other subcontinental teams as well; Sri Lanka being a noteworthy exception after their stunning 2-0 sweep of the Proteas in early 2019.
One could bring up the argument that the South Africans themselves will be playing Test cricket for the first time since March, and have played a grand total of three Tests this year — the New Year’s Test in Sydney in their tour of Australia and the two Tests against West Indies at home.
The Proteas, however, have grown up playing cricket in these conditions and the fast and bouncy pitches, unlike the subcontinental pitches that generally tend to favour the spinners, are something that they are far more used than most of the other teams in the world. They don’t quite need to adjust themselves to the conditions the way the Indians need to even if they have been far from their best in whites for a long time now.
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And before someone brings up the other argument of India having played as many as six limited-overs games against South Africa before the Test series, let’s not forget that a majority of the Test squad has not played a match since the World Cup final. It’s another argument altogether that white-ball experience doesn’t entirely count as practice for a Test match.
Cramped calendar taking a toll?
Tour games against domestic teams or specially-curated sides such as the Prime Minister’s XI thus are of great help for visiting teams looking to prepare for a specific format, especially Tests. However, with the cricketing calendar getting increasingly cramped with each passing year, the inclusion of practice matches has become virtually impossible for a majority of the boards.
It’s not just India in the ongoing tour of South Africa who will be skipping practice games; Australia did not play any either during their tours of India and England, and a number of former cricketers questioned the absence of such fixtures from their tour itineraries.
“The no tour game before the first Test in India. I hope I’m proven wrong but I think that is going to be significant. Batting in those conditions in one-day cricket and T20 cricket is one thing, batting in Indian conditions in Test cricket it is a completely different game,” former Australia captain Michael Clarke was quoted as saying on the Big Sports Breakfast show on Sky Sports Radio.
Cramped as the calendar might be, India needs to remember the fact that it’s up to them to ensure they leave no stone unturned in their quest to achieve the one feat that has eluded them all these years. Which means that the Indians should ideally have been able to find space for a tour game or two even if it came at the cost of the ODI series, which serves little purpose right after the World Cup other than handing debuts to fringe players.
India the stronger team on paper
On paper, however, Indian side that will be locking horns with the Proteas in the upcoming Test series certainly appears to be among the strongest it has fielded in recent memory. Additionally, the South African team has been having a mixed run in Tests even if they had been in resurgent form in the limited-overs formats in the recent months. Since their victory over India at home in the 2021-22 season, South Africa’s only series wins in Tests have come against the relatively unfancied Bangladesh and West Indies.
It is time for the Test series and Captain Rohit Sharma is READY! 💪🏾🙌🏽#TeamIndia | @ImRo45 | #SAvIND pic.twitter.com/EYwvGjuKGw
— BCCI (@BCCI) December 24, 2023
India have had a largely positive run in Tests in 2023, from the highs of beating Australia 2-1 in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and West Indies 1-0 in the Caribbean to the low that was their defeat in the World Test Championship final against the Aussies in June.
Read | What Rohit Sharma-led India’s XI for Centurion Test is likely to be
Additionally, it was this very team that had a rampant run in the ICC World Cup, where they won 10 matches in a row before losing a second world final against Pat Cummins’ Aussies this year, and although one can’t really compare ODIs and Tests, it certainly is indicative of the players being in good nick.
Practice matches or not, what fans of the Indian cricket team can expect Rohit and Co with utmost certainty is a a proper fight to the Proteas in Centurion as well as in Cape Town. The lack of practice games might be a disadvantage, but Rohit’s men certainly have the talent and determination in their ranks to leave the picturesque Newlands on the first weekend of the 2024 with the glittering trophy in their hands.
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