Elgar: Nice and relaxing for us. A few guys have been playing a bit of cricket. We had a good week’s camp at Jo’burg and there are no excuses for us going into this series. We have a debutant in Marco Jansen who has had a lot of success for the A-side against the Indian batters. We got three frontline seamers, Mulder as an allrounder and Kesh as our spinner. Kyle Verreynne misses out.
Kohli: Runs on the board and playing away from home…The wicket has a lot of grass on it and the Centurion pitch tends to get faster from day two onwards. It’s very challenging and our success away from home kinda started from here and we got a lot of confidence we can do this often. This is a very strong SA unit and we need to be at our absolute best. The preparation has been wonderful at the center nets. I can only tell you the combination we have: three seamers, Shardul and Ashwin.
India vs South Africa Highlights today, Sunday 26-12-2021, 1st Test, India tour of South Africa from SuperSport Park, Centurion.
Kohli win the toss and chose to bat first.
India team: 1 KL Rahul, 2 Mayank Agarwal, 3 Cheteshwar Pujara, 4 Virat Kohli (capt), 5 Ajinkya Rahane, 6 Rishabh Pant (wk), 7 R Ashwin, 8 Shardul Thakur, 9 Mohammed Shami, 10 Jasprit Bumrah, 11 Mohammed Siraj.
South Africa team: 1 Dean Elgar (capt), 2 Aiden Markram, 3 Keegan Petersen, 4 Rassie van der Dussen, 5 Temba Bavuma, 6 Quinton de Kock (wk), 7 Wiaan Mulder, 8 Keshav Maharaj, 9 Kagiso Rabada, 10 Lungi Ngidi, 11 Marco Jansen.
Form guide
(last five completed matches, most recent first)
India: WDWLW
South Afric: WWLLW
Match Timings: 08:00 GMT | 10:00 Local
Umpires – Adrian Holdstock, Marais Erasmus
TV Umpires – Allahudien Paleker
Match Referee – Andy Pycroft
Reserve Umpire – Bongani Jele
Match number – Test no. 2443
