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.

South Africa, on the other hand, decimated Bangladesh. But all records against Bangladesh should be struck off the Test statistics anyway, so they don’t really count.

However, while India can say that they were not destroyed by Australia in the Test series, a couple of things seem to have been forgotten in the heat and dust of battle, more off the field than on it. For starters, India began with a huge loss, going down by 337 runs at Melbourne.

And while the Sydney Test had all and sundry clamouring that we were robbed by the umpires, the fact remains that the Indian batting line-up, touted to be the best in the world, could not hold out for three sessions on the last day.

Cricket South Africa CEO Gerald Majola recently said that his side would ‘thump’ India, a statement that raised much mirth at home. But while he may have spoken more with enthusiasm than any real conviction, South Africa is not a side to be taken lightly, not least against India, home or away.

Indian cricket is on a high, in terms of some results, and a lot of money. It is almost inevitable that Test cricket will take a beating, in this age of Twenty20 games, and now the Indian Premier League.

But while it lasts, it can still be an intriguing drama, which hopefully will begin, when the first ball is bowled in Chennai.