SAvIND: South Africa win toss, elect to bowl first against India

Prasidh Krishna made debut for India. Ravindra Jadeja is not playing and has complained of upper back spasms in the morning.

After the white-ball cricket, India are back on the red-ball quest as India, especially the senior pros Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, will be looking to alleviate the heartburns of losing the ODI World Cup finals by rewriting history in Test series in the Rainbow nation.

Out of the 23 Tests India played in South Africa, they won only four but never the Test series. Therefore, all eyes will not be on the senior pros, but also the youngsters after Head Coach Rahul Dravid spoke about giving them the much-needed encouragement.

The calibre of Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer, who never played a Test match in South Africa, will be tested against the venomous attack on a bouncy track.

The onus also lies upon Captain Rohit and KL Rahul who have dismal Test average, and they would like to improve it. It is only Virat who has excelled under foreign conditions with the bat as he averages 50 plus in the Rainbow nation.

Rahul notched up a century and a fifty in the last visit to South Africa as an opener, but his form vanished and runs dried up. This time, in all likelihood he would bat in the middle in Ishan Kishan's absence, and it will be interesting to see whether he comes up trumps.