India fought in 2018, disappointed in 2022, can they finally win a Test series in South Africa now?

The narratives remain much the same before the latest attempt in South Africa unfolds on Tuesday. It’s a fresh start for Indian cricket, which has moved on from some of the familiar faces in the batting line-up in an important year that also features a five-Test series apiece against England and Australia. Add the sleepover tour of Bangladesh, and this really is the Year of Tests, apart from the theme-disrupting one-month distraction that is the T20 World Cup. And like in the previous two tours to South Africa, there is genuine hope that India would breach the bastion, which they have frequently stormed but not conquered.

Test Match Mode 🔛#TeamIndia batters are geared up for the Boxing Day Test 😎#SAvIND pic.twitter.com/Mvkvet6Ed9

— BCCI (@BCCI) December 25, 2023

For, South Africa is not as intimidating at home as they once used to be, The nightmarish 90s are long gone, the terror-inducing aughts is just a bad memory. In the last four years, they have surrendered series wins to Sri Lanka (who won 2-0 in 2019) and England, losing six of their last 15 games. The nine wins had been mustered against India. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and West Indies. India, too, has shed the cold dread of travelling to South Africa as they once did. They have won a Test in four of their five visits, snatched series lead twice and ran them close several times. India have buried the fear, but not burned the burden of history.

From 2006, India-South Africa encounters have produced great optics—vibes, energy and a high level of skills. Some of their duels have been stuff of legends, spectacles entrenched in the psyche, memories that roll forth in an instance. Like the Sachin Tendulkar-Dale Steyn bout of high-class batting and topnotch swing bowling; or VVS Laxman’s Durban masterclass; or Jacques Kallis’s defiant rearguard in Cape Town, or the Faf du Plessis-AB de Villiers resistance. in Johannesburg. The rivalry is richer than you had presumed.

The series in South Africa is a fresh start for Indian cricket, which has moved on from some of the familiar faces in the batting line-up in an important year that also features a five-Test series apiece against England and Australia. (PTI)

Though not as romanticized as the games in Australia, India’s exchanges with South Africa have produced riveting cricket. The games move along at a breakneck pace— wickets fall in a heap, runs arrive at a frantic clip, the ball kicks off the surface, seams this way and that; bounce-savvy batsmen unfurl strokes that burn the grass in the journey to the fence, cheered by a laidback crowd on grass-bank sun-bathing with a mug of beer and braai on the side, and the matches concluded fast. Just seven of the 23 Test matches between the two teams in South Africa have ended in draws (most of those heavily rain-influenced). In the last 14 meetings, just two have ended with split honours, despite rain interruptions in several games.

Almost every game made the audience traverse through the heightened emotional ebb and flow as only Test matches could. The forthcoming fixtures promise much the same. South Africa’s batting is in flux, the bowlers are crippled with injuries; India have a callow opener untested in hostile batting climes, a group of batsmen who have not played red-ball cricket in a while, one of their bowling trinity is absent due to an injury, as is their generational wicket-keeper, recouping from an accident. Both teams are flawed, both could be uncertain of their first, yet there is a buzz, a fervent wave of anticipation that assures to kill your post-lunch siesta.

Preps in full swing for the Boxing Day Test 🙌#TeamIndia sharpen their fielding skills ahead of the first #SAvIND Test tomorrow in Centurion 👌👌 pic.twitter.com/SftEN2kDED

— BCCI (@BCCI) December 25, 2023

There is an undulating excitement of Jasprit Bumrah returning to bowling in Tests after 16 months ago. He is a white-ball discovery, born to bowl with a red ball. In shorter versions, he is thrilling; in Tests, he is an experience. He would be without his most trusted ally, Mohammed Shami, but Mohammed Siraj could transform into a demonic proposition.

It would have been a festival of fast bowling metronomes but for the injury-enforced absence of Anrich Nortje and potentially Kagiso Rabada and Lungi Ngidi. But the new wave of seamers would be keen to leave an impression. The gangly Marco Jansen already has in the last series; Nandre Burger tormented India in the ODI at St George’s Park. Though the surfaces tend to be notoriously pacer-friendly, a trio of diverse spinners could enthrall the audience. Keshav Maharaj, Ravindra Jadeja and Ravi Ashwin are distinct as they come. Maharaj is the classical specimen; Jadeja the post-modernist, and Ashwin the fusion great, capable of strutting numerous riffs and ragas.

There is the intrigue of the unknown. Would Yashasvi Jaiswal continue his dream start to the Test career? Can Shubman Gill inherit the mantle of Kohli as the torchbearer of India’s rich batting heritage and score his first Test hundred outside Asia? After all, tours to South Africa present the ultimate test of mettle for Asian batters, where even the great Dravid averages a measly 29.71, Could Tony de Zorzi bat as audaciously as he did in the ODIs? Can Deal Elgar, the last of cricket’s stonewalling openers, end the series on a high? There are ample subtexts to this series. The predominant themes, though, would be new beginnings and breaching the final frontier.