India They will face South Africa in the second match of the two-match Test series. This article provides details about the second match of the series, India’s Playing XI vs South Africa.
India Playing XI vs South Africa – 2nd Test, South Africa Tour of India 2025:
Opener: Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul
India have no choice but to play and win the final match of the ongoing two-match Test series against South Africa if they want to avoid a second consecutive home defeat in their last three matches.
The hosts were disappointed with the team’s batting performance in the previous game and will be hoping to improve their form in the next match.
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The main concern for the team going into the second Test will be the fitness of Shuman Gill, who retired after playing just a few balls in the first innings of the previous match and did not play in the rest of the match.
If Shubman fails to recover before the next match, wicketkeeper-batsman and vice-captain Rishabh Pant will take over the captaincy.
Gill’s absence also means the team management will have to make changes to the batting line-up, with Sai Sudarshan replacing the captain.
Having said that, the hosts will be hoping that Gill recovers in time for the series decider as his absence will be a huge blow to India’s chances of winning considering the form of the top seven batsmen.
Otherwise, the home team is expected to have an unchanged batting line-up with KL Rahul and Yashasvi Jaiswal starting.
Both batsmen will have to take responsibility, both individually and as a pair, to get off to a good start and ease the middle order, which was not the case in the opener.
Middle-order batsmen and all-rounders: Sai Sudarsan, Washington Sundar, Rishabh Pant (C and WK), Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jhuler, Nitish Kumar Reddy.
As far as the make-up of India’s middle-order batsmen is concerned, Rishabh Pant is one of the most experienced batsmen among the top five and Gill’s absence leaves Pant with a wide range of workload.
It will be interesting to see whether the team management favors Washington Sundar, who batted at that position in the series opener and looked in good form before being dropped, or whether they choose Sai Sudardhan, who played a role in the previous series.
If the top four batsmen respond to the depth of the team’s batting line-up, which has two keepers in Pant and Jurrell and a number of all-rounders in Jadeja and Nitish, the batting line-up has a good chance of scoring big runs.
But there’s no hiding the fact that hitters have a hard time scoring on spin-prone tracks, so a lot will depend on how the pitch behaves.
Then the big question arises. Given what backfired in Kolkata, will India stick to their plan to play such a course or will they have a sporting wicket for the series finale?
Bowlers: Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Jasprit Bumrah
Like the batting, the team’s bowling is also looking for some answers following the shocking defeat in the previous match.
One of those questions is whether India had the right mix of fielding four spinners against Kolkata, or whether the home team had one too many spinners, considering Washington Sundar hardly bowled in the match.
Looking at the last few Test matches since Gautam Gambhir took over as India coach, Washington has been given a lot of support but hasn’t been given enough opportunities to showcase their ball-handling skills.
If the team management decides to stick with the same bowling attack, the other three spinners being Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel, it might be wise to give him more of a chance to have a say over the ball.
The fast bowling department of the team will be handled by Jasprit Bumrah, who was the chosen bowler in the first innings with a five-wicket haul, and Mohammed Siraj, who cleaned up in the second innings.