There can be a case when BCCI could send a few players to South Africa 10 days before the start of the South Africa Test series, a report in PTI suggests. Team India is set to fly to the country for the series on December 26 while the first practice game will start on December 30.

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SA vs IND 2018: BCCI Keen to Send Test Specialists 10 Days Before the Tour Begins 1 — Colombo: India’s captain Virat Kohli, centre, leaves the ground with his teammates after their win in the first test cricket match against Sri Lanka in Galle, Sri Lanka, Saturday, July 29, 2017. Indian won the match by 304 runs. AP/PTI(AP7_29_2017_000063B)

That will be the only practice match which the Indian team will be playing, and there will be not much time left for the players to assimilate to the conditions in South Africa. Hence, the BCCI is planning to send few of the players to the country early, a formula which was adopted in 2010 when ten players were sent to the country early on Gary Kristen’s advice,

“There is a school of thought that we should do something similar to the 2010 tour of South Africa, when some of the batsmen went 10 days prior to others and did their skill-based training at Gary Kirsten’s academy in Durban. India had their best result in South Africa as they drew the series 1-1. It’s like Australia what did earlier this year when the Test specialists arrived in India early for the series while a new-look T20 team played against Sri Lanka in the T20s. These are some of the areas that may be addressed by the selectors and team management,” a BCCI official told PTI.

As the official mentioned, Cricket Australia also experimented the concept of a separate team for T20Is and Test series, and as a result, their Test side was here in India for the Test series while the T20I team was playing three-match series against Sri Lanka. Hence, the same can be the case with India especially with selectors getting a big pool of players due to IPL.

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India Vs Sri Lanka, Eden Gardens, Kolkata, Test Drawn, Virat Kohli, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami — Down the track, rock-solid Dhawan in action. Photo Credit: BCCI.

In case this happens, it will be interesting to see who will be the players who would be flying to South Africa and who would play the T20I series.

Players like Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Hardik Pandya – who are also part of the Test side – would play ODI series against Sri Lanka, they can’t go to South Africa until December 17.

There can be a case when Test specialists like Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Murali Vijay, Wriddhiman Saha could be sent to South Africa early and train there for the three-match Test series starting on January 5.

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