South Africa vs India 2018: 5 reasons to watch the ODI series

Team India's ODI unit is like a well-oiled machine capable of winning in all conditions across the globe.

Batting has always been India's biggest strength, but we now have a battery of fast bowlers capable of picking up wickets with the new ball as well as delivering the goods with the old ball in the dying stages of an innings and 2 amazingly talented wrist spinners capable of stemming the flow of runs in the middle overs by consistently looking to attack for wickets.

Can this team lead by a passionate and aggressive Virat Kohli re-write history?

Let's look at the top 5 reasons which will make this ODI series a compelling watch:

#5 History and #1 ranking beckons Team India

Team India will look to create history in South Africa

India have never won an ODI series in South Africa and their overall record in South Africa is quite abysmal with just 5 wins out of 28 ODIs.

Starting from a 2-1 defeat in the Test series which ended on a high with India winning the last game, Team India will be looking to create history by seeking to become the first Indian side to win an ODI series in South Africa.

The last bilateral series between the 2 sides took place in India way back in 2015 when South Africa prevailed 3-2 after having lost the Test series and India will be looking to return the favour this time around.

There is also the added incentive of wresting back the #1 ODI ranking from South Africa if India manage to win the series 4-2.

#4 Is Rahane the solution to India’s No. 4 experiment

Ajinkya Rahane will look to cement his spot at No. 4 in the Indian ODI side

Ajinkya Rahane has been in the news for having been controversially dropped from the playing 11 in the first 2 Tests against South Africa.

Having made a successful comeback in the last Test match, Rahane once again underlined his value as a technically accomplished batsman in testing overseas conditions. With India set to play in South Africa, England and Australia over the next few months and with the 2019 World Cup in England just under 17 months away, skipper Virat Kohli has indicated returning back to Rahane as the No. 4 batsman in the Indian ODI side.

Since the 2015 World Cup, India have tried as many as 10 players in the No. 4 position: Yuvraj Singh, Ajinkya Rahane, M. S. Dhoni, Manish Pandey, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik, Manoj Tiwary, Virat Kohli, Kedar Jadhav and K. L. Rahul.

Vying for the No. 4 position in this series we have Shreyas Iyer in addition to the usual suspects - Rahane, Karthik, Pandya, Dhoni and Jadhav. By the end of the series, India will be hoping to have identified a long-term No. 4 thereby solving this key problem area for the one-day unit.

#3 Will Virat Kohli score his 1st 100 in South Africa?

Virat Kohli needs to fire for India to win in South Africa

King Kohli is the modern day master of the one-day game and he is well on his way to establishing himself as an all-time great in this format.

The numbers are mind-boggling:

- With an average of 55.74 after having scored 9030 runs in 194 innings across 202 matches at a strike rate of 91.73, Kohli has the highest batting average in the history of one-day cricket for anyone having played more than 40 games.

- With 32 ODI hundreds to his name, Kohli sits 2nd on the list of all-time ODI century makers, only behind Sachin Tendulkar, who leads the list with 49 hundreds.

- Fresh from his twin wins as ICC Cricketer of the Year 2017 and ICC ODI Cricketer of the Year 2017, Kohli enters the series as the #1 ranked ODI batsman (with 876 points) just ahead of his RCB team-mate and arguably the most destructive batsman in world cricket, Mr. 360 - AB de Villiers (872 points). With AB injured and set to miss the first 3 ODIs, Kohli will look to extend his reign at the top of the rankings.

With virtually every innings Kohli plays these days, he either breaks or creates a new record either as a batsman or as a captain or both. For all his exploits, Virat Kohli is yet to score a one-day hundred in South Africa.

He has scored 319 runs at an average of 45.57 across 9 innings in 11 matches in South Africa with the highest score of 87*. It is safe to say that for India to win this series, Kohli will need to lead from the front and if he does score a 100, then he will go on to create another record of having scored a 100 in every country and continent that he has played one-day cricket in.

#2 Dhoni’s 10K milestone

MS Dhoni - Milestone Man

Dhoni needs just 102 more runs to become the 12th player overall, the 4th Indian behind Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, and just the 2nd specialist wicket-keeper batsman after Kumar Sangakkara (discounting Dravid as a wicket-keeper) to score 10,000 ODI career runs.

The 11 players in this elite list so far (Sachin, Sangakkara, Ponting, Jayasurya, Jayawardene, Inzamam, Kallis, Sourav, Dravid, Lara and Dilshan) have all been players who have either opened the innings or consistently batted at No. 3 or 4 for their sides.

For someone having batted most of his career at No. 6, Dhoni’s achievement will be no mean feat, especially since he is all set to become the first player in this list to have a career average in excess of 50. He currently averages 51.55 after having scored 9898 runs in 268 innings across 312 ODIs.

#1 Litmus test for India’s wrist spinners

Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav will look to prove their mettle in overseas conditions

With the way one-day cricket is being played these days (with flat pitches conducive to batting, powerful bats and rules favouring power-hitting batting) finger spinners have almost become redundant and almost every team now has one key wrist spinner in their ranks.

India are lucky to have been blessed with two high-quality but varied wrist spinners in Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal.

After a stellar performance in home conditions all through 2017, these 2 wrist spinners not only put up one match-winning and heart-warming performance after the other but they also displaced and moved India’s 2 premier Test spinners Ashwin and Jadeja from the one-day unit to the fringe lines.

However, the real examination begins now, starting with the one-day series against South Africa to identify if these 2 talented bowlers can deliver the goods on supposedly seaming and non-spinner friendly conditions.

Needless to say a strong performance from them in this series, will go a long way in booking their berths for the 2019 World Cup squad.