After South African pacers made three early inroads, Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer showed the intent to fight and played counter-attacking knocks to take India to lunch at 91/3 in the Boxing Day Test, being played at SuperSport Park in Centurion. (Scorecard | Live Blog | Full Coverage)
En route his gritty knock, Kohli achieved yet another milestone in his already storied career. The India batting lynchpin surpassed Rahul Dravid as India's third-highest run-getter against South Africa, when he reached a score of 16. Dravid, who is now India head coach, had amassed 1,252 runs against the Proteas in Tests.
Kohli is now third behind legendary opener Virender Sehwag, who had consolidated 1,306 runs against South Africa in the red-ball format. All-time great Sachin Tendulkar leads the pack with 1,741 runs to his name.
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Earlier, at the toss, India captain Rohit Sharma confirmed that they have handed a debut to young pacer Prasidh Krishna, whereas Ravindra Jadeja was replaced by Ravichandran Ashwin in the playing XI for the first Test match.
The BCCI later announced that Jadeja faced upper back spasms on the morning of the Test match, that led to him sitting out of the game. The toss was delayed due to a wet outfield at SuperSport Park.
Teams:
India: Rohit Sharma (c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh Krishna.
South Africa: Dean Elgar, Aiden Markram, Tony de Zorzi, Temba Bavuma(c), Keegan Petersen, David Bedingham, Kyle Verreynne (wk), Marco Jansen, Gerald Coetzee, Kagiso Rabada and Nandre Burger.
