New Delhi: Team India's long wait to play a test series will finally end tomorrow. After a gap of two years, Indian Team will play a test series under home conditions. Team India's record at home is quite impressive and they have just lost a single series against England in 2012 in recent times.
Under its new skipper in Test Virat Kohli, India will look to forget the recent defeats in T20 & ODI series against South Africa with an eye on win against the number one side in the tests.
Team India's main strength going forward will be their spin bowlers but when it comes to batting Team India will depend a lot on the opening duo of Shikhar Dhawan and Murali Vijay.The right hand and left hand opening pair will have the difficult task of negating the initial burst of quality bowling of Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel.
It has been a while since Vijay and Dhawan together opened for Team India. The pair last played together in Bangladesh at Fatullah. They scored 239 for the first wicket partnership. Vijay and Dhawan are the fifth most successful Test opening pair for India. They have scored more than 1000 runs while opening for India at an healthy avarage of 50.47.
Both Vijay and Shikar could not open their innings together in the historic test series win against Sri Lanka.Vijay missed the first match due to a hamstring injury in which Shikahr scored a century. But a hand injury prematurely ended Dhwan's series, which allowed Vijay to return in his place for the second Test alongside KL Rahul.
Interestingly, both Vijay and Shikhar are expected to open the Indian batting innings at Mohali. It is the same venue where both the right handed Vijay and left handed Dhawan took on Australian bowlers when both teams played in the third test of Border -Gavaskar Trophy in 2013. India won the match by 6 wickets.
It was a memorable debut for Dhawan who went on to score 187 runs from just 174 balls and giving him a proper support was Murali Vijay who, quite opposite to Dhawan, played a patient knock of 153 runs from 317 deliveries. They had put on a 289-run stand, which was the highest ever opening partnership in India-Australia Tests, surpassing the previous best of 217 scored by David Boon and Geoff Marsh in 1986.
Dhawan took just 85 balls to reach his 100, the fastest century on Test debut, surpassing Dwayne Smith, who had scored a 93-ball century against South Africa in 2003.
Recently, Murali Vijay said," it's important to be good friends off the field in order to succeed as a pair on it. And it is absolutely true. Shikhar and I share a very good rapport off the field and that helps us in the middle,” .
"Although our games are different, we know each other's games very well. As far as our personalities go, some people think he is the relaxed one and I am the serious one. But while batting, it's the other way round. I am more relaxed and he is usually pumped up. We complement each other well in that way," Vijay said.
