NEW DELHI: Following their defeat to South Africa in the first Test in Cape Town on Monday, India’s think-tank has to make selections based on specific conditions as they bid to keep the three-match series alive heading into the second Test at Centurion starting Saturday.

Here are the talking points for Virat Kohli‘s team ahead of the crunch match.

No open and shut case

India’s openers produced stands of 16 and 30 in Cape Town. Shikhar Dhawan was out both times trying to pull short balls, when in a tangle. Murali Vijay steered catches towards gully. Neither managed a score of note against top-quality pace bowling. The question here is, was the right opening pair picked?

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Dhawan would have been a tempting pick because of the left-right opening combination. He had form on his side too, leading Ravi Shastri to dub him “a must” because “he has got lots of runs” before the team left for South Africa. But in South African conditions, with more bounce and movement, a player of KL Rahul’s solidity is the better pick. The same Rahul of whom Shastri said “he is the most improved player in the last 18 months”.

India must seriously consider using Rahul in place of Dhawan, for the simple fact that he is technically more sound than Dhawan. Rahul has Test centuries in Australia and the West Indies – apart from in Sri Lanka – but more than that, it is his compact technique that offers more hope than Dhawan’s. At Centurion, where the ball will move around, having a batsman who leaves well and who has a good understanding of where his off stump will be a big asset.

Bold wasn’t beautiful at Newlands

Not playing the vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane raised plenty of questions before the first Test, and Kohli’s post-match comments of Rohit Sharma being preferred because of his better form left people even more quizzical. It was a bold decision. If nothing, Kohli is just that: bold.

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But here’s the thing: Rahane has the temperament and technique to succeed in such conditions. His average outside India is 53.44, with centuries in Wellington, Melbourne, London, Jamaica and Colombo (twice). At home, it is 33.63 which, before he scored twin centuries against South Africa in Delhi in 2015, lay at a lowly 7.83.

The struggle with Rahane has always been in India. His issue has been getting starts in conditions where the ball is turning. Of his 64 dismissals in Test cricket, 35 have been to spin. For Cape Town, he was assessed on a terrible home series against South Africa, in which he managed a paltry 17 runs in five innings. In that series, Rohit scored 102*, 65 and 50*. Soon after, in the span of a week, he hammered an ODI double-century and the joint-fastest century in Twenty20 internationals, off just 35 balls. Clearly, such outstanding form proved impossible for Kohli to ignore once India’s think tank sat down to identify the No 5 position in Cape Town.

Rohit, with an average of 25.11 outside of India, and four fifties in 27 innings, made 11 and 10 in defeat. It can be argued that it was one poor match for him in a Test in which barring Hardik Pandya nobody scored a half-century, but with a series to keep alive, India need to opt for the batsman with a proven overseas record in tough conditions.

Is spin a must?

There is another way India could fit in Rahane. Given the success of pace bowlers on both sides in Cape Town, most stunningly Vernon Philander’s six wickets on what proved the final day of the Test, it is the seamers who will play the biggest role in this series, which raises the question: is playing a spinner a necessity?

India picked R Ashwin as the sole spinner in Cape Town. In South Africa’s first innings, Ashwin bowled 7.1 overs and took 2/21. In their second, he bowled a solitary over as India’s pacers made inroads into the batting. With the bat, he made 12 and 37, the latter the highest contribution to India’s total of 135 on day four. Ashwin is a more than able batsman, with four Test centuries and 11 half-centuries, but his role as a spinner in South Africa is bound to be limited.

With the Centurion surface expected to be just as seam-friendly as Newlands was, but with more pace and bounce on offer for the fast men, there is merit to India thinking along the lines of dropping a spinner and accommodating a specialist batsman. Its a tough selection, but dropping Ashwin for Rahane would foreseeably add meat to the batting. India played four pace bowlers in Cape Town with sparkling results, so it does make sense to play an extra batsman.

Left-hand, left-field

It is a left-field pick, but India also have the option of looking at Parthiv Patel as opener, keeping up the right-left combination with Vijay. That would mean no Rahul, but allow India to play Rahane in the middle order and persist with Rohit, whom Kohli clearly has a lot of faith in. The last time India called on Parthiv was when England toured in 2016 and Rahul was injured, and the batsman-keeper did justice to his role as opener with scores of 42, 67*, 15 and a career-best 71.

After swinging safari, can India bounce back?

Philander, bowling hero of South Africa’s win in Cape Town with nine wickets, was to the point about his dismissal of Kohli on day four. “Make sure that we set him up with the other one. I always knew I had the one coming back. It was probably two-and-a-half overs of away-swingers and then the one back at him. It was definitely a plan to keep him quiet, and also to drag him across to make sure that when you do bowl the other one, he is on the other side of the off stump.”
So simple. India were caught unaware of the threat of movement, while expecting bounce. At Centurion, a venue further north than Cape Town, it is bounce more than seam movement that is the norm – and a threat to touring teams. On a pitch known more of bounce than lateral movement, and one prone to variable bounce, India’s batsmen will have to counter the challenge they expected in Cape Town. In particular, Morne Morkel on his home ground could prove the biggest threat.
However, in all of this there is another conundrum for the tourists. It has been revealed that Ishant Sharma woke up on the day of the Cape Town Test with a fever, which forced the team management to opt for Bhuvneshwar Kumar. They had already made up their minds, it appears, to hand a debut to Jasprit Bumrah. The rookie took four wickets, the highlight being 3/39 in 11.2 overs on day four including a beauty of a ball to get Faf du Plessis for 0.
However, given the bouncy nature of the Centurion track, there is a good argument to be made in playing Ishant, the most experienced member of this squad when it comes to Tests in South Africa. India need someone to emulate Morkel, and given his height and ability to extract bounce, as well as his bowling form against Sri Lanka, Ishant could be an inspired pick. Source : timesofindia