Stopping Virat Kohli, the threat of Keshav Maharaj...Key battles as India take on South Africa

We take a look at where the Test series between India and South Africa could be won and lost...

Stopping Kohli…

An often impossible challenge, but a vital task nonetheless. In an Indian side packed full of batsmen with an insatiable appetite for subcontinental runs, stopping Virat Kohli is hardly a route to victory on its own. Yet, fail to stop him and that, in Indian conditions, is as good as a death knell.

The talismanic skipper averages 64.68 on home soil and, having witnessed Steve Smith’s return to Test cricket from a distance, Kohli will doubtless believe he has a point to prove, a position of dominance to reassert on the cricketing universe.

Smith has seemingly snatched back the mantle of the world’s finest player – perhaps the finest ever, in the case of the former Australia captain. Kohli, however, is at his most dangerous at times like this.

Last time these two sides met in Test cricket, South Africa emerged victorious – a 2-1 win played out amid some quite thrilling cricket. Lungi Ngidi burst onto the scene with a six-wicket haul on debut, while AB de Villiers topped the home team’s runscoring charts. He, of course, will not be of any assistance this time around.

When South Africa last faced India in red-ball cricket in Indian conditions, though, it was a different story. Spin was the order of the day – just as it will be this time. In the final Test in Delhi, de Villiers faced 297 deliveries for his 43, while South Africa batted 143.1 overs for their final-innings 143.

Hashim Amla, meanwhile, almost usurped de Villiers’ titanic effort; he made 25 off 244 balls. One for the purists, no doubt. If conditions are unlikely to reach those extremes this year, the blueprint has been set.

The pitches will not be dissimilar now. The team selected by India is a telltale sign of that; Ravi Ashwin and Ravi Jadeja are joined by just Ishant Sharma and Mohammed Shami in the seam department. Wriddhiman Saha has been picked to keep wicket, presumably for the quality of his glovework up to the stumps. If the pitch is flat, you want your wicketkeeper sharp to anything that comes his way. If it is going to spin from the outset, you want your best hands.

“According to me, he's the best keeper in the world,” Kohli said of the 34-year-old, who will make his first international appearance for 22 months when the sides take to the field on Wednesday.

His selection at the expense of Rishabh Pant is a controversial one, if only because of what the world knows Pant can offer. Whether he can do so on a regular enough basis as his current, 21-year-old self, is another question entirely. Whether his keeping is near that of Saha's at this point is equally doubtful.

Indeed, there is no doubting that Saha’s glovework is superior and, with the likelihood of a major emphasis on spin from early on, there is reason to the decision to plump for Saha over the young, exciting, erratic Pant.

^{Rishabh Pant has been left out of India's first Test side}

"The best Test spinner South Africa have ever produced"

Unusually, perhaps, given their chequered history with match-winning spinners, South Africa arrive in India with one of their own, with one who has all the tools to trouble India’s feted batting lineup.

In Keshav Maharaj, the tourists are armed with an answer to Jadeja – a left-arm spinner capable of generating sharp spin at pace. Ninety-four wickets at 28.44 represents the record of a man at one with his art.

While playing for Yorkshire as their overseas player in the 2019 County Championship season, Duanne Olivier – the former South Africa bowler now at Headingley in a Kolpak capacity – described his colleague as “probably the best Test spinner South Africa have ever produced.”

He added: “He’s so good. He hardly gives you a bad ball. Even if it doesn’t turn, he finds ways to get wickets.”

In Test cricket, he has taken Joe Root’s wicket twice at an average of 27.50, as well as Smith’s on three occasions at a cost of just 22.33. Few have managed that. Quite simply, he dismisses good players. He will give South Africa something different, something deeply necessary – a quality option both to tie up an end and to threaten both edges.

Battle of the seamers

Maharaj, however, cannot do it alone. Nor, for that matter, can India’s battery of tweakers. The absence of Jasprit Bumrah to what was initially coined as a “minor stress fracture” will up the stakes on both Sharma and Shami, while South African eyes will focus in on Kagiso Rabada, Ngidi and Vernon Philander.

Rabada enjoyed a superb IPL earlier this year, but these are two starkly different games, two contrastingly unforgiving formats. The pitches will give him little, so what he gets will be whatever he can muster out of it.

Both Sharma and Shami are willing, top-drawer performers. Yet, neither are Bumrah. Neither have his unusual wrist, his unique action, his unparalleled skillset. The young phenomenon’s ability to turn an innings and a game on its head in next to no time has marked him out, even just 12 Tests into his international career, as one of the world’s standout red-ball bowlers.

More than his capacity to swing the ball late as he showed in England last year, it is his raw pace and awkward trajectory that have succeeded in bursting open the door on even the flattest of pitches that has proven so eye-catching in recent times.

In his absence, others must stand up. Ashwin is another; back in the fold after injury, he was forced to watch as Jadeja plugged away as his side’s sole spinner during their recent tour of West Indies. He is back in the side now and back in the conditions in which he so thrives. He has taken his 38 Test wickets against South Africa at an average of just 17.57.

India are almost unbeatable in their own conditions. It is South Africa now, who are tasked with trying to stop them.