Why BCCI should closely follow South Africa versus Australia series

India ended their tour to South Africa with a hard-fought but well-deserved series defeat in Tests and commendable first-time wins in the One Day International and Twenty20 contests. This has been quickly followed by Australia's tour there, which the visitors have begun with a bang, after a thumping win in the first Test at Durban despite the last innings heroics of a possible future hero Aiden Markram and the resilient newcomer Tim de Bruyn.

But for the Indian Test cricket fans and followers, it was once again sad to find out what happens in South Africa once the Indian team leaves its the country.

Very, very often, Australia has followed India with a tour to South Africa or has played them at home thereafter. More often than not, they have won and won commandingly. The team that seemed so difficult to beat for India is immediately dismantled and sometimes ripped apart by a superior outfit. This Australian dominance perhaps aggravates feelings of Indian inadequacy on South African turf more than India's own defeats against South Africa.

India lost the Tests and tri-series in 1997 immediately after that came the Aussies to record their first Test and ODI series win. India lost to South Africa in September-October 2001 in the Tests and ODI tri-series and South Africa went down under to be trounced in the Tests. But they won the ODI tri-series where they lost a number of games to Australia but kept off a Shane Bond-led Kiwi attack that was good enough to defeat the Aussies but not good enough to put it across the Proteas.

Though in early 2006, they won the ODI series against the Aussies at home in super dramatic style, after they got blanked at home for the first time in Tests that followed against a team without Glenn McGrath and a debutant paceman who won the man of the series award, Stuart Clark.

Just some months later, in the first Test series of the South African home season they played India, where the latter were outclassed in the ODIs, won their first Test in that country at the Wanderers, were in a dominant position for two-thirds of the Test series and still managed to lose 1-2.

India toured the country again in late 2013 and early 2014, got blanked in the ODIs but as a young Test team surpassed themselves by being in dominating situations through both the Tests of the series and yet found ways to lose 0-1. A red-hot Mitchell Johnson tour de force followed right after India left and the Aussies won 2-1. 2018, too, on the basis of the first Test between South Africa and Australia seems to follow the same pattern. 

Almost all the Tests that have followed the conclusion of an Indian tour to South Africa and the commencement of an Australian tour there, have resulted in the Australians immediately stamping their authority on a South African tour as if they were playing at home. This has been best captured in first Test first innings batting performances on conditions with bounce, pace, conventional and unconventional swing and sometimes seam movement in all their glorious rawness.

Under such circumstances, in the first innings of the first Test of a tour to South Africa Steve Waugh and Greg Blewett have smashed Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock at the Wanderers in 1997; Adam Gilchrist waded into Pollock, Hayward and company at Durban in 2002; or Shaun Marsh and Steven Smith wore down Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander at Centurion in 2014.

Much more than the bowling, it has been the Aussie batsmen who have jostled to put their hands up and give match-winning, series-shaping innings in series that have been largely three Tests long. And this is where, for what it's worth, the value of the practice game before the beginning of a series gets earmarked - something repeated ad nauseam now that India did without it before the first Newlands Test in Cape Town. What did the team with the unbreakable seeming record in South Africa do right? Here is what Steven Smith had to say after winning the Durban Test:

"Yeah, nice way to start, especially against a top-quality opposition. Really pleased with the way the boys played, Mitch Marsh coming in with 96, the way the tail contributed, that was obviously the difference in the end. A really good game of cricket. I think winning the toss and batting was ideal. Reverse swing played a part through the game. It was a hard-fought Test match, yesterday was a great day of Test cricket, Aiden Markram played exceptionally well, but when Mitch Marsh broke that partnership it got a bit easier. Our practice in the game before this Test was spot on and it's pleasing to play as we have. There's no doubt SA will come out hard at Port Elizabeth and we'll be up for the fight again."

The first batting innings of the first Test in any series often goes a long way to influence what happens in it. Very rarely have teams won or drawn Test series after losing the first game. Even a batting unit naturally adept at playing in pacy, bouncy, swinging conditions like Australia found batting difficult at Durban, but was able to find batsmen like Mitchell Marsh willing to graft it out, look ugly, play in the "V" and not throw his wicket away. (Compare what Vijay, Dhawan, Kohli and Rohit Sharma achieved and their approach to batting against Rabada, Morkel, Steyn and Philander in the first innings of the Newlands Test.)

Ergo: Even the practice game may not ensure all the bases being covered, but it may help one/two players in getting ready for the big battle. A quick glance at all Australian tours to South Africa since 1992 reveals them playing and playing very well in the practice games before the start of a Proteas series.

Picking the brains of the Aussie management to find out their success template to being regularly spectacular in South Africa must be made part of the coaching manual of teams like India before they set off for a tour there.

Those who ignore history, tend to repeat it, first as tragedy and many times later as farce. It's certainly the case of Indian Test performances in South Africa. For these reasons perhaps the BCCI must send equipped personnel to shadow the Australian team in South Africa, and see how they get the basics right.

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