Cricket South Africa (CSA) will send a squad of eight spin bowlers and six batsmen to attend a week-long spin bowling course in Mumbai on Saturday.
“The programme has been one of the major features on the CSA HP Skills Programme and has been held annually either in India or Sri Lanka,” said CSA High-Performance Manager, Vinnie Barnes.
The eight selected spin bowlers are Bjorn Fortuin, Simon Harmer, George Linde, Keshav Maharaj, Tehepo Ntuli, Aaron Phangiso, Dane Piedt and Prenelan Subrayen.
The batsmen contingent is comprised of Temba Bavuma, Reeza Hendricks, Smangaliso Nhlebela, Hector Ngobeni, Sitaan van Zyl, and Dane Vilas.
The group will be accompanied by CSA batting consultant HD Ackerman, and CSA spins bowling consultant Claude Henderson.
“Simon Harmer, Dane Piedt, Prenalen Subrayen and Keshav Maharaj who have been on previous spin camps, have seen the benefits of working with top Indian spin coaches,” Barnes said.
“It has also become quite an important initiative to improve our batsmen s techniques and game plans against spin.
Temba Bavuma, Rilee Rossouw, and Stiaan van Zyl are some of the batsmen who have credited their improvement of batting against spin to the spin camps (in the subcontinent),” Barnes added.
South Africa, in their last tour of India in 2015, were bamboozled by Indian spin duo Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin. None of their batsman able to defy the spin of Jadeja and Ashwin.
They lost a series in India for the first time since 2006. India’s victory over them also displaced the visitors from the numero uno position in Test ranking.