South Africa skipper Temba Bavuma, ahead of the Boxing Day Test on Tuesday, said that India’s strong bowling attack can nullify the advantage of the experience that the hosts have in Centurion.Bowlers like Mohammed Siraj, Gerald Coetzee, Jasprit Bumrah and Kagiso Rabada are likely to star on a surface that will more or less play in their favour. In such a situation, it will be up to the batters to take up the challenge and deal with the threat posed by the bowlers.
“We understand conditions a lot better so you’d expect us to adapt a lot better but their bowling is quite strong. The fact that they’ve been able to achieve such success is because of their bowling attack and that kind of nullifies the advantage we have. It’s more between the batters and how the batters take on that challenge,” Bavuma said as quoted from ESPNcricinfo.
India’s top six features four batters – Rohit Sharma, Yashavi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Shubman Gill, and Shreyas Iyer who average more than 40. None of the Proteas batters has an average that can match this.However, if one digs deep only Kohli stands out with a stunning average of 51.35 in South Africa. The rest of the batters have struggled to put up runs as Rohit has an average of 15.37 in four Tests.Jaiswal and Iyer have yet to play a single Test in South Africa.
On the other hand, South Africa have two batters Aiden Markram (43.92) and Dean Elgar (46.16) who average more than 40. Skipper Temba Bavuma is just shy of the 40 mark as he averages 39.11 on his home soil in red ball cricket.Their performance could play a vital role as South Africa look to maintain their unbeaten home record against India.
“There’s a lot of pride attached to that – that we’ve been able to keep that record intact as a South African team… all of us as players also feel that. But we understand playing against India comes with certain challenges and it’s those types of challenges we would like to focus on. Playing against India comes with a lot more eyes and a lot more scrutiny in terms of everything we do,” Bavuma said.
“So it’s accepting that. And the other, more obvious one, is the skill factor on the field. For me as a batter, the bowlers are going to put you under pressure and their batting line-up as well, they’ve got renowned Test players and guys who performed in all conditions. They are a determined team as well, who want to be able to say they’ve won a Test series here in South Africa so with that extra bit of drive and motivation, we’ll really need to be at our best,” Bavuma added.
India’s Test squad: Virat Kohli (Captain), Rohit Sharma (vice-captain), KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Shreyas Iyer, Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant (wk), Wriddhiman Saha (wk), R Ashwin, Jayant Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Mohd. Shami, Umesh Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Shardul Thakur, Md. Siraj.
South Africa Test squad: Temba Bavuma (c), David Bedingham, Nandre Burger, Gerald Coetzee, Tony de Zorzi, Dean Elgar, Marco Jansen, Keshav Maharaj, Aiden Markram, Wiaan Mulder, Lungi Ngidi, Keegan Petersen, Kagiso Rabada, Tristan Stubbs, Kyle Verreynne (wk).
