South Africa captain Temba Bavuma believes that a strong Indian bowling attack nullifies the home advantage of the Proteas’ home edge in the two-match test series against South Africa, which begins on Tuesday. The Pace bowlers’ performance would be crucial to the outcome of the highly anticipated series since the conditions would suit their style of play.
With the likes of Kagiso Rabada, Lungi Ngidi, Gerald Coetzee, Marco Jansen, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, and Shardul Thakur in the mix to play the first test in Centurion, a highly fought series between South Africa and India is expected to be dominated by fast bowlers, with World Test Championship points up for the grabs.
Speaking to the media ahead of the first Test, Temba Bavuma admitted that they understand the home conditions better, but believes that the Indian team has a quality bowling attack to challenge their batters on the home conditions, negating their advantage, and believes that the series will be more of a battle between the batters.
“We understand conditions a lot better so you’d expect us to adapt a lot better but their bowling is quite strong, The fact that they’ve been able to achieve such success is because of their bowling attack and that kind of nullifies the advantage we have. It’s more between the batters and how the batters take on that challenge,” Temba Bavuma said.
The fast-bowling unit from both sides will attempt to test the batters’ defences on both the mental and physical levels in seamer-friendly conditions. However, Proteas batters have the advantage of playing their over a long time, while the Indian batting team must figure out how to deal with and score runs against South Africa’s attack, which features three or four tall speed bowlers.
We Understand Playing Against India Comes With Certain Challenges – Temba Bavuma
Temba Bavuma stated that the team takes great pride in being undefeated at home against the mighty Indian team in the red-ball format of the game that there will be a lot of pressure on their team while playing against the Men in Blue, and that the Indian team will have extra drive to win their maiden test series on South African soil.
“There’s a lot of pride attached to that – that we’ve been able to keep that record intact as a South African team… all of us as players also feel that, But we understand playing against India comes with certain challenges and it’s those types of challenges we would like to focus on. Playing against India comes with a lot more eyes and a lot more scrutiny in terms of everything we do”.
“So it’s accepting that. And the other, more obvious one, is the skill factor on the field. For me as a batter, the bowlers are going to put you under pressure, and their batting line-up as well, they’ve got renowned Test players and guys who performed in all conditions.
They are a determined team as well, who want to be able to say they’ve won a Test series here in South Africa so with that extra bit of drive and motivation, we’ll really need to be at our best,” Temba Bavuma added.
In this two-match series, Rohit Sharma-led side will be looking to win their first Test series on South African soil. Although South Africa has typically dominated at home in Test matches, the Indian squad has great potential to make history by dominating across formats in 2023.
