African misadventure of Virat Kohli & Co

History shows India are poor travellers, but this team under Virat Kohli was primed to erase that tag a touch this year, starting with the tour of South Africa.

Just two Tests and that notion is back already, with Kohli and his bunch of 'aggressive' boys flunking their first real test, the three-match series with a Test to spare.

The reasons for the surrender, though, were as much due to factors off the field as on it...       

Preparation, what's that?

"For us, every game is a home game."
Thus spoke Ravi Shastri in his usual, no filter avatar before India's first Test against South Africa. If only cricket was as straightforward as India's head coach would want us to believe.
Truth is, Team India's misplaced sense of confidence of mastering alien conditions without playing practice games has been left exposed after just two Tests in a long season on the road.
To be fair, the schedule too was cramped, with the team touching base in the rainbow nation merely a week before the start of the Cape Town Test.
However, the team management thought it wise to cancel the lone two-day practice game and instead have open net sessions.
Ask any cricket expert and they'll tell you about an unwritten rule in the sport: no amount of nets, open or close, can replicate time out in the middle, practice or proper. And, no amount of grass at the Eden Gardens or Dharamsala against hapless Sri Lankans can replicate the challenge of battling hungry Proteas in Cape Town or Wanderers.
By the time the Indian batsmen could get used to the bounce on offer in South Africa, the first in three Tests was already lost.
As the great Bishan Singh Bedi aptly put, "we wasted our time with the Sri Lankans".                     

Selection muddle

This is probably the only India series in recent times in which selection calls have been put under as much scrutiny as the performances on the field.
Kohli had his knives out as soon as questions regarding his choice of the playing XI popped up after the second Test, but if a captain is in the business of making bold decisions — as Kohli is — he must be prepared to either get lauded for it or the stick.
There's absolutely no harm in Kohli going by his gut feeling about selection matters. That said, there needs to be some amount of consistency to go with it.
If the think-tank wanted to adopt the now-famous horses for courses policy in picking teams wherein conditions have the final say, then Ajinkya Rahane ought to have walked out in Cape Town in place of Rohit Sharma.
The former averages 53.44 outside India and 69.66 in South Africa, the latter averages 25.35 outside India and 15.37 in South Africa. It's a no-brainer, really.
On the flipside, if the think-tank wanted to go by form and disregard all other factors, then Bhuvneshwar Kumar should've held the fresh cherry in Centurion. He was one of the two men who shone in the first Test (with both ball and bat), yet was sidelined from the next.
Horses for courses or current form, the selection was a bit messed up, either ways.

Soft dismissals

Cheteshwar Pujara, India's No. 3, spoke about the importance of leaving the ball well before the series began. The message, it seems, didn't quite reach his teammates.
In the first innings of the first Test, four out of the top six batsmen got out poking at balls that were as harmless as Keshav Maharaj on that Cape Town track.
In the second dig, two of them — Vijay and Ravichandran Ashwin — performed an encore, with Hardik Pandya being an unwelcome add-on.
In the second Test, too, there were wickets from deliveries that shouldn't have had OUT written on it, and we're not even talking about run outs yet. Think of Murali Vijay in the first innings, or KL Rahul in the second, or Ashwin in the first, or Pandya in the second.
"So many soft dismissals in one match hurt a lot," Kohli said on Wednesday.
The dismissals were soft, the reasons hard to fathom.

Silly, costly errors

To borrow a tennis terminology, India had some costly unforced errors written against their name in the final analysis. While most quality players can get away by committing them against average opponents, there's no room for it against a Roger Federer or a Rafael Nadal.
Team India was like that quality player gifting unforced errors in this series, especially in the second Test, to a strong South African outfit at home.
On a pitch where making runs was far easier than in Cape Town, Pujara, a man with a steady nerve and mind, hurriedly ran himself out twice.
Why, at a time when Kohli and Pandya were forging a threatening partnership that could give India a vital lead in the second innings, the latter forgot to ground his foot as well as his bat despite crossing the crease to get run out.
And these are just silly gifts with the bat, not counting ones on the field.
"You work so hard, you prepare for a match, you get into good situations, shift the game towards you, and then the momentum shifts because of these mistakes," Kohli said after the second Test.
No wonder the South Africans could wrap the contest up in two sets.

Butterfingers surface

If there is one area in which South Africa have been light years ahead of the visitors in this series so far, it is the catching and ground fielding.
This brand new, Kohli-led Team India prides itself on its fielding, but it wouldn't in its first eight days out in the park in 2018.
The slip cordon was a worry even before the start of the series, and Rahane's exclusion from the team weakened it further. Worse, catches were being spilled right behind the wickets as well as in the outfield, and just at a time didn't want them.
India could've polished the hosts off under 320 had they not dropped Kagiso Rabada twice in the first innings. India could've seized the momentum had either Parthiv Patel or Pujara attempted a catch to dismiss Dean Elgar on the third evening. India could've kept the lead below 250 had KL Rahul pouched one at short leg to dismiss Faf du Plessis.
The Proteas, on the other hand, pounced on to half chances like a pack of hungry wolves.