Rainbow at the end of final frontier?

PTI

Centurion, December 25

He endured the heartbreak of a lifetime last month but Rohit Sharma will give his all to erase the memories of a World Cup final defeat as he trains his eyes on ending India’s long wait for a Test series win in South Africa.

The two-match Test rubber, starting here on Boxing Day, will be India’s ninth away series in the Rainbow Nation since 1992, and the captain will have an onerous task of traversing a difficult terrain in order to conquer what has always been dubbed the team’s ‘final frontier’.

However, for the action to start at the Supersport Park, heavy rain predicted on the first two days needs to subside.

The Centurion track offers variable bounce and is one of the fastest in the region. And that makes up for a compelling contest between bat and ball in relatively cooler and windy conditions in an open ground where it can jag around a bit.

In the last ODI World Cup, Rohit would have emulated Kapil Dev and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, but if he and his men manage to pull off a coup in this country, he would stand first among equals.

Mohammad Azharuddin (1992) failed, so did Sachin Tendulkar (1996) and Sourav Ganguly (2001). Rahul Dravid (2006-07) and Dhoni (2010-11 and 2013-14) won Test matches, and so did Virat Kohli (2018-19 and 2021-22) but none of them could win the elusive series in South Africa.

So, Rohit will have a job at hand and a win might just be the much-needed balm required to heal the World Cup wounds.

For the golden generation of Indian cricketers, this is also their last African safari and a chance to achieve what no other team could on eight previous tours.

In Temba Bavuma’s South Africa, they have a team that has a formidable fast bowling attack, which could really be troublesome for the young Indian batters.

For Yashasvi Jaiswal, it will be the first big test against a quality attack comprising Kagiso Rabada, Lungi Ngidi, Marco Jansen and Gerald Coetzee. There will be way more bounce than what he faced in the Caribbean, and the variable nature of it will ask probing questions.

Similarly, Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer, who have proven their mettle on sub-continental pitches, need to up their game in more challenging batting conditions.

Iyer, especially, with his well-documented weakness against the short ball, will have to churn out something really special.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.

#Rohit Sharma