da brdice： There’s no Tendulkar, and several of this India batting line-up don’t have any experience in South Africa, making it a huge challenge against arguably the world’s best bowling
da bet vitoria： Sidharth Monga16-Dec-2013When Sachin Tendulkar was not a former India player, he always took the front left seat on the team bus. Nobody used to sit next to him. It was always Tendulkar and his thoughts. Two days before India go into a big test of their transition, Virat Kohli was in that seat on the team bus. It was perhaps symbolic that while Kohli might have sat in that row, he didn’t take the Tendulkar seat. He sat in the aisle. The window seat was vacant. It reminded you of the MS Dhoni joke before India left for here: that they will pick Nos 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12.Jokes aside, while Kohli is the perfect fit to take that No. 4 position, and the pressures of comparison that might come with it, this tour is a stern test for the Indian batting. Once again, they will find themselves with all to do. If the bowlers outbowl their South African counterparts, it will be a bonus. Two days before the Wanderers Test, hopefully used to the bounce here, they trained for three hours, in what is expected to be their batting order in the Test.Shikhar Dhawan knows he is not going to get too many balls to drive outside off. There will be a lot of short stuff into his body, and many short of a length outside off. Accordingly in the nets, he asked the bowlers to first bowl short of a length, on and around off. He left everything alone. Here was a man reacquainting himself with the off stump after a long stretch of playing either Tests in India or ODIs where you don’t pay too much for not knowing the whereabouts of the off stump. He just looked obsessed with leaving balls alone. Duncan Fletcher, for whom this is a big test too, looked on from behind. After the leaving was done, Dhawan asked for the bouncers. There will be quite a few of them in the Tests. And he hooked them all.M Vijay, his opening partner, went through a more normal routine in the nets, although he came back for a second round when all were done. He says it is not about special preparations for him. It is about how he is feeling, how he is hitting the ball. He will need to hit it really well here then: 459 of his 1108 Test runs have come in three innings against one team and in India. This is the first time he has travelled outside India knowing he is going to be the first-choice opener, by right and not because someone has rested. Vijay, though, doesn’t have ODI runs to fall back upon.Cheteshwar Pujara, along with Vijay the only India batsman to have played in South Africa, was his usual self, just loving to bat. South Africa will have noticed his tendency to hook a little compulsively. He has been out caught three times playing that shot in Tests, once in Durban on the previous trip. He likes playing the shot, manages to keep it down, but when it gets higher than the shoulder he sometimes fails to pull out of the shot. India will look to him for the solidity. When Rahul Dravid first came on a full trip to South Africa, Sachin Tendulkar told him he would have done well if he scored 250 runs. That won’t be a bad target for Pujara, although this is just a two-Test series.Kohli has been at the receiving end of some intense bowling from South Africa. They know he can run away with the game. They have tried to soften him up. There was a mini-controversy when reports suggested the Indian management objected to the clip of his getting injured being shown during a match week after the injury had occurred. It was denied by the team management. Ray Jennings, who has worked with Kohli, feels there might be a chink or two in his game when it comes to fast bowling but if he stays confident he can ride the tide.Kohli has looked reasonably confident on this tour. He has asserted neither he nor his team-mates are scared of fast bowling. Just that the ODIs have been too short a sample. Courage is often over-rated, the word perhaps should be temperament. South Africa will test Kohli’s. They will dry up his boundaries, and will ask him to play away from his body, which he does well in India. Here the ball will bounce and seam. Kohli will have to show – he has done so before – his temperament.Rohit Sharma should move to No. 5. He had a long session in the nets, including throwdowns that took much of the time. They first came from MS Dhoni who struggled to pitch the ball. However, Trevor Penney, the fielding coach, and CMK Dhananjay, the analyst, gave him a good workout. Not as stern a working over as Dale Steyn gave him in the ODIs. He is one of the few Indian batsmen who like to hang back, a bit like VVS Laxman. And like Lamxan needed to be, he will need to be wary of the full ball, lest he doesn’t cover the movement by staying back.Rohit will in all likelihood be followed by Mumbai team-mate Ajinkya Rahane, who will be in the most precarious position of all the batsmen. He will virtually be making Test debut in South Africa. He is not carrying the confidence of the runs the rest of the batsmen are carrying, regardless of the failure in the two ODIs. There will be nerves there. He has waited for a long time to get a proper place in the Test side, and it is coming in South Africa and against arguably the best attack in the world.The Indian batsmen know it’s not going to be easy, but they also know the pressure of expectations is not going to be as high as on the teams that were whitewashed in England and Australia on the last two overseas trips. They know that seat by the window in the front row on the left can be left vacant. Their captain doesn’t want replacements for the seats vacated. He wants men that will just do the job.
