Proud India record to be tested

WANDERERS: WORLD’S NO 1 TEAM HAVE NEVER LOST HERE AND PROTEAS AIM TO CHANGE THAT

Proteas captain Faf du Plessis described it as an amazing statistic that India have never lost a Test match at the Wanderers ahead of the third and final game of a series that South Africa have already won, starting in Johannesburg today.

India’s 123-run win in Johannesburg in December 2006, inspired by Sree Sreesanth’s eight wickets, is one of their most famous, and they drew their other matches at the Wanderers in 1992 (Tendulkar’s century), 1997 (Cullinan’s hundred saved South Africa) and 2013, the thriller when South Africa finished on 450/7 chasing 458.

“I would have definitely put something on India losing here before. But I guess it’s like us in Perth, you just feel confident at a place, you feel you can perform and you run with it. But India are obviously under pressure at 2-0 down, and we have to keep them under pressure.

“The way we start is very important. That first hour on the first day, we have to be really solid. We need to make that fighting spirit slowly go away because India will come back with a point to prove, they’re a proud team and they won’t want to lose 3-0. I expect another good challenge,” Du Plessis said at the Wanderers yesterday.

The skipper confirmed that South Africa were considering leaving out spinner Keshav Maharaj and playing an all-pace attack, but it was a decision that had to be made with great care.

“We’ll definitely speak about not playing a spinner, that is an option. It was an option at Centurion too but then we found the pitch was the exact opposite to what we expected, so you need to keep your options open. But this Wanderers pitch looks normal.

“But if we leave out Keshav Maharaj then we need to be 100% sure about it and then it becomes a choice between playing the all-rounder (Andile Phehlukwayo) or the seventh batsmen (Theunis de Bruyn) and four seamers. We have a strong bowling attack and conditions will suit them,” Du Plessis said.

The scorer of an epic century in the 2013 match between the two sides at the Wanderers said the Proteas have plenty of motivation to finally bring the current world No 1 team to their knees at the famous Bullring.

“Against India, you don’t often get the opportunity to beat them 3-0, so that would mean a lot. We also want to perform with consistency as much as possible and winning this game would also allow us to go into the series against Australia with some momentum, which will be important because they’ve been playing very good cricket recently. So we are very motivated,” Du Plessis said.