Gill, Gambhir and the Test of transition: South Africa’s world champions bring the heat to India’s fortress

Test cricket will be back on the menu for the Indian cricket team and their supporters after the white-ball tour of Australia as Shubman Gill’s men gear up to host world champions South Africa for a two-match series that gets underway later this week.

The upcoming series against the Proteas, which begins on Friday, 14 November at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens, marks the second assignment for the Indian team in the 2025-26 home season, with Gill and Co having faced West Indies in as many Tests last month.

And while they had faced little resistance from the Roston Chase-led side back then barring West Indies’ fightback in the second innings in Delhi, they can expect a much tougher challenge from the South Africans later this month. Temba Bavuma’s men, after all, arrive on Indian shores as the world champions – a term they certainly aren’t used to in cricket – having beaten Australia in the World Test Championship final at Lord’s in June.

The conditions in Kolkata and Guwahati – the venues for the upcoming series – will be quite different from those at the ‘Home of Cricket’ earlier this year. However, it is the confidence gained from winning the final of an ICC event for the first time in nearly three decades that should inspire South Africa to overcome the challenge not just of the conditions but of an Indian team that has lost a home Test series just thrice in the last four decades.

South Africa were responsible for one of those series losses – under Hansie Cronje’s leadership in early 2000 – but haven’t won a match in the five-day format since Hashim Amla and Dale Steyn inspired Graeme Smith’s side to an innings victory in Nagpur in February 2010. They had also suffered 0-3 defeats in their last two visits in late 2015 and 2019 respectively, collecting just one draw across these two trips.

But the WTC triumph, along with their remarkable fightback in the second Test against Pakistan that helped them draw the two-match series 1-1, Bavuma and Co will certainly fancy their chances not just of ending their winless run in this part of the world but also to collect a series triumph after 25 years.

Raging turners no longer India’s go-to strategy for home Tests? 

What will further boost South Africa’s hopes of producing a much better performance in India than in their last two visits are recent reports that suggest that the wickets being prepared at the Eden Gardens as well as Guwahati’s Barsapara Stadium aren’t quite the raging turners that have largely been the case with Indian wickets since the turn of the millennium.

“I don’t think it will be as spin-friendly as we experienced in Pakistan,” veteran South African left-arm spinner Keshav Maharaj said ahead of the series opener in Kolkata.

“I think it will be good wickets that deteriorate as the game goes on. If you watched a bit of the West Indies series, it went to day four and five. The narrative is changing in terms of getting wickets. You want to give yourself the best chance when you’re in home conditions, so maybe it’s felt that let’s play on good cricket wickets and let the game deteriorate as it goes on,” he added.

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And will make the Proteas, especially their pace department, happy is the fact that there is a high possibility of reverse swing coming into play in Kolkata, where the black soil pitch is expected to have good bounce initially, but slow down as the game progresses.

And while several members of the touring party are making their first appearance on Indian soil, at least in the Test format, the Proteas’ 2-0 sweep in Bangladesh last year as well as their recent fightback against Pakistan highlights the fact that Bavuma and Co have an idea of what it takes to succeed in the subcontinent.

India, meanwhile, are a team that aren’t entirely out of the transition phase following Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli’s retirements from the format earlier this year, and captain Gill and head coach Gautam Gambhir are still pondering over the ideal combination, especially in the batting department, in all likelihood.

The ‘Gill-Gambhir Era’, however, has been off to a successful start with the team not letting the transition affect their performance on the field. Gill, after all, had led the Indians to a 2-2 draw in the marquee five-match Test series in England earlier this year, which was followed by a 2-0 sweep of the West Indians at home.

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South Africa’s status as world Test champions, thus, does not take the ‘favourites’ tag off India, regardless of the change in conditions that is the result of New Zealand’s historic 3-0 whitewash last year. And with wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant back in action after recovering from a foot injury that he had sustained during the England tour, the hosts will be fielding a full-strength side in Kolkata and Guwahati.

India take a major call with Jurel’s inclusion over Reddy

Where things get interesting for India, meanwhile, is in their batting order for the series opener at the Eden Gardens, with the home team having already announced Dhruv Jurel’s inclusion in the XI purely as a batter. Jurel had kept wickets in Pant’s absence in England and was the first-choice wicketkeeper against the West Indies last month.

And it was his maiden Test hundred against the Windies in Ahmedabad, along with his twin centuries in the second unofficial Test against South Africa A that made it virtually impossible for the management to leave him out of the team after Pant’s return to fitness.

Batting all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy, who had scored a memorable century in Melbourne during the tour of Australia last year but hasn’t had much of an impact in recent red-ball outings for India, will be making room for the Uttar Pradesh stumper’s inclusion.

It marks a significant shift in strategy for the Indian team. Gill and Gambhir, after all, have shown an inclination towards multi-dimensional players, especially when taking players in the middle-order into account. It is this approach that has led to the team preferring Washington Sundar in the XI over a world-class spinner like Kuldeep Yadav in England, the latter spending the entire trip warming the bench as a result.

Four centuries in Jurel’s last eight First-Class outings, however, isn’t easy to overlook, and the Indian batting order – whose frequent collapses were the chief reason for the whitewash against the Black Caps last year – looks a lot more secure after the 24-year-old’s inclusion.