***Official*** South Africa in India 2015

[StephenZA]

Yea what I was trying to say is the opposite - peak India will beat peak SA.

Probably have to agree to disagree on this point! Not with the current teams.

 

[Black_Warrior]

I don't think that the SA batting is brittle, our openers are inexperienced but Faf, Amla and DeVillers are well proven. (Hence, my concern regarding Amla`s form, but class is permanent) Duminy (hoping he plays) and Vilas will be solid. Harmer and Philander can hold a bat but I am not counting on any of our bottom 4 to add many runs. Whereas I look at the Indian batting line-up and see highly talented but unproven inconsistent performers, who I think may struggle against consistent disciplined bowling, which SA will bring.

I would tend to agree with you on paper but cricket isn't just an individual sport though. An inexperienced opening combination could generally mean SA losing early wickets, which puts extra bit of pressure on the strong middle order, no matter how good.

 

[StephenZA]

I would tend to agree with you on paper but cricket isn't just an individual sport though. An inexperienced opening combination could generally mean SA losing early wickets, which puts extra bit of pressure on the strong middle order, no matter how good.

Yes, our inexperienced opening combination could put pressure on the middle order. But they also may give us good starts we don`t know yet. My comment is that, while not impossible, I don't see SA ending from a position 50 for 2 to 200 all out often or easily. I have a bigger concern of being 250 for 5 to 300 all out. In the late 90`s early 2000`s SA team were brittle and would collapsed from good positions and quite often would not make a 300 run score, even with good lower order batsmen. We relied on our bowlers to keep us in the matches. Nowadays`s, for me, this has changed I trust our top 6/7 to get us to 350+ most games (but we don`t add much with the bat from 8 to 11) and we still have the bowlers to win matches for us both when we are in trouble and just outright.

 

[Prince EWS]

van Zyl at the very least is going to get starts and look awesome IMO. I think if he fails it'll be because he's not kicking on, unless India decide to open with Ashwin or something.

 

[Heboric]

First though Amla must contact Misbah for some coin tossing lessons, he is the Sachin of coin tossing.

 

[AndyZaltzHair]

Rahane and Vijay are good test batsmen who can handle anything thrown at them and they are in decent form. Rahul looks promising and Kohli is the kind of guy who can start looking like he was never out of form after one good innings. Rohit on Indian pitches is just gold. Ashwin is bowling insanely well too. We are good enough to compete. Maybe even beat them. Pace bowling options sucks balls admittedly. Shami in the squad could have helped.

As long as we don't let Steyn go super saiyan, we should win this with spin bowling and scoreboard pressure. I think.

Rahul got exposed in SL. Not sure about him doing much against Steyn and co. Technically inept atm is my opinion. Will be absolute farce if he gets selected ahead of Pujara.

 

[honestbharani]

Probably have to agree to disagree on this point! Not with the current teams.

Don't think so. I think in Indian conditions with current teams, I would always back peak India to beat peak RSA. But of course, this is a moot point as you hardly ever get one team playing at its peak for a whole series, let alone two.

 

[Shri]

Rahul got exposed in SL. Not sure about him doing much against Steyn and co. Technically inept atm is my opinion. Will be absolute farce if he gets selected ahead of Pujara.

What? He Scored a 100 in the series and seems to have minor issues with the balls coming back into him. Seam movement will become non existent real quick in our pitches and he will score well if he survives the first 45 minutes every time. He might have even gone back and tried to correct that mistake by now between the 2 series. Not anything major wrong with him apart from that except for temperamental things which only goes away with experience..

 

[Daemon]

Yeah, I think Dhawan will sit out personally, so same top 7 as the last Test in SL except Binny for Jadeja

 

[OverratedSanity]

Doubt Dhawan will be dropped. He scored a hundred in the last test he played.

 

[Daemon]

Doubt Dhawan will be dropped. He scored a hundred in the last test he played.

haha, somehow forgot about that. Gotta be Dhawan and Pujara opening then. If Pujara gets dropped after his match winning ton then Kohli can get ****ed.

Could make a case for Rahul and Dhawan with Pujara at 3 (bye bye Rohit) I suppose.

 

[morgieb]

What happened to Vijay?

 

[OverratedSanity]

Yeah wtf Daemon forgetting about Vijay is a bit random. He's in our top 3 best batsmen.

Vijay's spot is secure. Dhawan, Rahul and Che need to fight it out for the other opening slot.

 

[honestbharani]

too bad Rohit's spot is secure too though..

 

[OverratedSanity]

If Vijay doesn't get picked, that'll be the end of it. It's already ridiculous enough that 2 of our best batsmen (Rahane,Che) are either not in the team or are playing out of position to accomodate Rohit at a spot which suits him. I don't mean to just hate on the bloke endlessly but it's quite a dumb situation.

 

[AndyZaltzHair]

What? He Scored a 100 in the series and seems to have minor issues with the balls coming back into him. Seam movement will become non existent real quick in our pitches and he will score well if he survives the first 45 minutes every time. He might have even gone back and tried to correct that mistake by now between the 2 series. Not anything major wrong with him apart from that except for temperamental things which only goes away with experience..

Not going to argue much about it because I have seen him in SL only. He should get credit for the hundred but Vandort (or Thiri) missed an absolute sitter in slips. Time will tell.

Edit: It was Mubarak

 

[Contra]

I might be setting myself up for serious backlash as the series goes on but I also don't feel Devilliers will be that much of a problem in tests as he is in ODI's. The gap between him in limited overs and tests is a lot less, and personally I don't rate him that highly against spin as most. Having said that AB is a lot better as a batsmen than he was a few years back when we had the wood on him in tests so he might put in a much better performance.

 

[Prince EWS]

de Villiers is still the best in the world in Test cricket IMO, but yeah he's not as far ahead of the mean as he is in ODIs.

 

[Contra]

de Villiers is still the best in the world in Test cricket IMO, but yeah he's not as far ahead of the mean as he is in ODIs.

He might possibly be, but I don't fear him as much in India as I would outside it I guess is what I'm trying to say, this is based mostly on watching him in the past during a couple of India-SA series back in the 08-11 period. He's just become better since then so it will be interesting to see if he really guns it this time.

 

[Daemon]

Yeah wtf Daemon forgetting about Vijay is a bit random. He's in our top 3 best batsmen.

Vijay's spot is secure. Dhawan, Rahul and Che need to fight it out for the other opening slot.

Haha I'm a mess in this thread