Resurgent India face enigmatic South Africa

Chennai: When the series between India and South Africa begins at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai on March 26, do stand up a give a vote of thanks to the recently concluded series in Australia.

What keeps Test cricket alive is intrigue. It’s not a plot where things always happen in a hurry, and unlike a 50-over game or a Twenty20 game. Teams need to keep their focus and wits around them for all of five days and adapt themselves with the ebbs and floes of the game.

That is what would make India’s trip to Australia a boon. Not only did the Indians fight it out on the field, they fought even harder off it, and that may well be a plus as they largely managed to stay focussed.

Facing them will be a team that has been a enigma, right from the time they returned to international cricket. They never seems short of players, be it bowlers or batsmen, but they invariably seemed to come apart in matches that mattered, especially in the one-day version, a weakness attributed mainly to mental weakness than any technical inability.

South Africa come to India with a record that many sides would love to have. They have somehow always been able to put together a performance that left us wondering, how come a team like India, who can be practically unbeatable in home conditions, come a cropper against the Springboks. Between 1996 and now, South Africa have almost always recorded wins in India, including an unheard of 2-0 whitewash in 1999-2000.

But that is the past, and as wisdom says, a team is as good as their last match. Given the standards of the opposition faced by the two sides in the recent past, it would be a safe bet to vote for India as the side with a better record. They came out with their pride intact from the Australian series.