The time has come for Team India’s biggest challenge as the much awaited series is going to start next week. The Indian team is going to South Africa after a long time and definitely wants to improve their past record. As team India has not won a single Test series in South Africa in the last 25 years, which started in 1992. On the bouncy pitches of South Africa, India has won only two Tests.
The best result was in 2010-2011 when India played 1-1 draw. Team India will be eying to win this series away from home. In 2018, the Indian team has to play three major series. The first of them is against South Africa. In this tour, India has to play three Tests. Six ODIs and three T20Is will also be played.
Virat Kohli will return from this series after taking a break from cricket due to the marriage. Kohli has not played 3 matchs ODI series and 3 match T20I series against Sri Lanka. This series is biggest challenge for Virat Kohli as a skipper of team India Kohli scored a hundred on the tour of 2013-14 in Johannesburg and credited it to the fight to face the challenge. He said, “I played Test cricket only once in South Africa, but I was waiting for it. Cheteshwar Pujaraand and Ajinkya Rahane has also played in South Africa.
Kholi on South African Tour:
Kohli said that they haven’t played a lot outside sub-continent in past couple of years except Champions Trophy 2017 in England but the current team is confident to face the challenges.
“We are talking about a wholly different panorama over here, which we understand as a team and we are looking forward to it. Every tour is a chance, if you look at the teams which have gone to South Africa in the past, I mean you are talking about some of the biggest names in Indian cricket, it’s not like that was not like a chance,” Kohli sounded cautiously optimistic.
“You need to play really good cricket for a very long period of time to win series and that is something that we are pretty excited about and we want to go out there and express ourselves. The most important thing is that we are enjoying each other’s company and that’s exactly what we are looking to do,” Kohli added.
The skipper did admited that the bowling attack of South Africa in 2013-14 with a lot younger Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel was more experienced.
“The bowling attack back then compared to know what South Africa has been more experienced and we did really well against them. We almost won the Test in Jo’burg (Johannesburg), it was a close game, we lost in Durban, but we played some really good Test cricket.
“The bowling and the batting has come a long way, all the guys are much more experienced now, but the hunger remains the same, we still want to go back and try to do what we couldn’t do last time around,” he concluded.
(With inputs from PTI)
