A litmus test for the gen-next

How things will turn out in South Africa is the most pressing concern amongst the Indian cricket fans presently.

The absence of Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid in the batting line-up, bouncy pitches, lack of depth in the inexperienced bowling attack, handful number of matches played by the members in the current Indian cricket team and the back to back whitewashes in the overseas conditions are some of the issues which are causing worries among the Indian fans, despite team India being the number one and number 2 side in the ICC ODI and ICC test rankings respectively.

The most experienced players on our side are the pace spearhead Zaheer Khan and skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who have played 50 test matches each in the overseas conditions. The fact that the current Indian batting line up consists of the top 3 run-getters in the world for 2013 (i.e. Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli), is superseded by the fact that among them only Virat Kohli has played 7 overseas matches while the other two are yet to play a test match away from home. Even Cheteshwar Pujara who bats at the crucial no.3 position for India in tests and has a lot of runs under his belt in the domestic career and has an impressive record in the international test matches played at home, has just played two tests away from home.

The bowling department is not looking very impressive either, due to the fact that M.Shami and B.Kumar haven’t had a lot of international exposure and both of them would be playing their first test match in this tour. Presence of Zaheer Khan provides a sense of relief among the fans as he has a bit of international exposure and has proved his mettle at the international level a lot more times in the past.

On the other hand, if we look at the positives, team India is being led by ‘captain cool’ Mahendra Singh Dhoni who has been adjudged as the captain for the ICC test as well as the ODI team of the year 2013. He knows how to utilise his resources to the most of the capacity. He likes to up the ante when the odds are against his team and more often than not he is successful in making his team victorious. He just follows his intuition and never thinks twice before taking risks. He never loses his cool in tense situations and always backs his team-mates which helps them to play freely and deliver results. Not to forget, he is also the best ODI finisher currently with an average of 53.44 coming in the winning run-chases for India.

The batting line-up has also been in good form of late and as already mentioned above, the top 3 run-getters of 2013 are Indians. We have Cheteshwar Pujara at the no. 3 position who has a technically sound temperament just like Rahul Dravid. He also has a very impressive record at home. His recent knock of 257* for his state of Saurashtra in a Ranji Trophy encounter should ease his mind and help him play a relaxed innings at the tour of South Africa.

B.Kumar and M.Shami will also get a lot of help from the bouncy pitches in South Africa and it would be interesting to see how they make the most of it.

Not to forget India has the likes of Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh and Ravindra Jadeja who are match winners and can turn the course of the match by themselves if it’s their day. Along with players like V.Kohli, R.Sharma and S.Dhawan they form a formidable fielding unit which would help team India to save a lot of runs in the matches.

The fact that India will play the ODIs first will help them to get used to the alien conditions and will help them to prepare for the tests in a better manner.

It can be said that it is a litmus test for the young Indian team. The players are extremely talented but are going to play in conditions which is out of their comfort zone. It would be an interesting contest to watch how the Indian players play against the likes of the fiery Dale Steyn, V.Philander and Morne Morkel.