India-SA Test Series: A Big Opportunity For Kohli To Prove His Critics Wrong

The Indian cricket team is just two days away from sending its legion of followers in a tizzy as it girds up its loins for another brush with the South Africans at the Valhalla based venues, Centurion and The Wanderers, Johannesburg, both falling in the Omicron hit province of Gauteng. Come Boxing Day (December 26), when the Yuletide mood is at its zenith, Virat Kohli’s team, will come out of its bio-secured life at a resort to engage in a Test series that will be India ‘s eighth in South Africa since  1992, when  blessed by Madiba Nelson Mandela, the two countries founded cricketing ties. The time is also upon Kohli, in the radar now following his disagreement with BCCI president Sourav Ganguly on the India Twenty20 captaincy matter, to focus on cricket for the first time under Head Coach Rahul Dravid. India has played 20 Tests in South Africa and lost 10 and so it will try to unleash Jasprit Bumrah and company to win a first Test series there for the first time. Kohli would be the fulcrum around whom India will strive to put match winning totals on the board; should he not, it would  be interesting to see the response from the Chetan Sharma led Selection Committee, nay, BCCI. The third Test at Cape Town will be his 100th. Remarkable feat indeed!