South African bowlers dominated Day 1 of the opening Test match against India at SuperSport Park on Tuesday, December 26. Before KL Rahul's impressive unbeaten knock, Kagiso Rabada's five-wicket haul stumbled the travelling side in Centurion.
India lost the toss and were forced to bat on Centurion's rain-hit and pace-friendly surface. Rabada quickly adapted to the playing conditions with excellent bowling from the start. He dismissed Rohit Sharma with a pitched-up delivery and forced him to play a pull shot which found the fine leg.
Youngsters Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal also failed to impress and lost wickets to debutant Nandre Burger. India showed some resistance through Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer but both batters fell to Rabada's clever variations with the ball.
Apart from KL Rahul's sensational 70* off 100 balls, Indian batters had no answer against tacky playing conditions. After the match, the former captain and commentator Sunil Gavaskar highlighted the pitch's nature and how Indian batters faced similar conditions in Johannesburg during the 2018 tour.
India were bowled out on below 250 scores in both innings but recorded a 63-run win after Ajinkya Rahane's impressive 48-run knock in the second innings. Both Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara are missing this tour after inconsistent performances throughout 2023 and are unlikely to make a return to international cricket.
However, after seeing India's struggle in difficult playing conditions, Gavaskar talked about Rahane and his impressive record in overseas conditions.
"People have been talking about the pitch in the Johannesburg Test five years back and I was there," Gavaskar said. "Yeah, it wasn't the easiest of pitches to bat on the odd ball was climbing up. Ajinkya Rahane, who had not been picked for the first two Test matches, was picked for that game and he showed what the Indian team had missed because earlier on in the first couple of Test matches India did not lose by big margins. So maybe somebody with Rahane's experience overseas... because Rahane overseas has been such a fine, fine player and maybe if he had been there today the story could have been completely different."
South Africa Playing XI: Dean Elgar, Aiden Markram, Tony de Zorzi, Temba Bavuma (c), Keegan Petersen, David Bedingham, Kyle Verreynne (wk), Marco Jansen, Gerald Coetzee, Kagiso Rabada, Nandre Burger
India Playing XI: Rohit Sharma (c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna
