India captain Rohit Sharma is back to take the field for India after a gap of five weeks and would look to put the loss in the ODI World Cup final to Australia behind himself as India prepare for the conquest of their final frontier in the longest format of the game.
India have not won a Test series on South African soil yet and Rohit and his men look determined to rewrite history. While all eyes will be on India's performance in the Rainbow Nation as the red-ball leg of the tour gets underway with the Boxing Day Test in Centurion on Tuesday (December 26), the Indian skipper is also on the verge of a personal Test milestone and it has largely gone unnoticed.
The Nagpur-born is the third-leading Indian to hit the most number of sixes in Test cricket with 77 maximums to his credit and is just two hits away from moving past former India captain MS Dhoni.
Dhoni smashed 78 sixes in his Test career which saw him play 90 games and currently holds the record for being the second leading Indian to hit the most sixes in the red-ball format. Former India opener, Virender Sehwag, holds the record for smoking the most number of sixes in Tests for India.
Sehwag, 45, was able to clear the fence on 91 occasions in 104 of his Test appearances for India.
India's Test squad for the South Africa series:
Rohit Sharma (c), Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Prasidh Krishna, KS Bharat (wk), Abhimanyu Easwaran.
South Africa's Test squad:
Temba Bavuma, David Bedingham, Nandre Burger, Gerald Coetzee, Tony de Zorzi, Dean Elgar, Marco Jansen, Keshav Maharaj, Aiden Markram, Wiaan Mulder, Lungi Ngidi, Keegan Petersen, Kagiso Rabada, Tristan Stubbs and Kyle Verreynne.
