India-South Africa Test matches have always been special, and this series is going to be no different.
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“It was not easy to move on,” said Rohit Sharma, nearly a month after India’s heartbreaking defeat in the final of the 2023 World Cup in front of a packed Ahmedabad crowd.
It could not have been much different for Virat Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja, and R Ashwin and their teammates. One or more of them may play in the 2027 World Cup in South Africa, but that is a long, long time away, as is the next World Test Championship final.
For now, they have another shot at history, at helping India conquer their Final Frontier: win their first ever Test series in South Africa. That will not heal the wounds of the World Cup, but it is the closest to a healing balm in near future.
India have come close before. Twice – in 2005/06 and 2021/22 – they won the first Test match, only for South Africa to come from behind and claim the series 2-1. In 2010/11, India levelled the series after South Africa went one up. In the third Test match, India took a two-run first innings lead before having South Africa at 130-6, but they were thwarted by Jacques Kallis.
More than the others, the four Indian seniors will set out to change that record. India will host South Africa in 2025/26, but they do not travel there again in the 2023-27 ICC FTP.
There is much at stake for South Africa as well, who will want Dean Elgar, the man who had been part of their dominance, slump, and resurgence, a fitting farewell. A series win or even a keenly contested series may – there is no guarantee, of course – lure the fans and the board back to Test cricket, at least temporarily.
The series is also likely to witness an intense clash between two high-quality pace attacks. While the spearheads – Kagiso Rabada and Jasprit Bumrah – are among the greatest produced by their nations, the support cast will provide an indication of how the two bowling attacks will shape up in the years to come.
Yet, this series is not about the future alone, for India and South Africa go back a long, long way.
A rivalry like none other
The Gandhi-Mandela Trophy is the only bilateral Test cricket series named after two men who neither played nor governed the sport.
Despite their geographical distance, India and South Africa have a shared history that dates back to 1860, when Indian labourers started to settle down in Natal. Their long, detailed history is beyond the scope of this piece, and is not restricted to the 1949 Durban Riots that resulted in the death of many a South African Indian.
The story of a young Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi being evicted from a first-class compartment at Pietermaritzburg in 1893 is, of course, well documented. In 1914, Gandhi returned to India as an activist and politician.
In 1921 – seven decades before Clive Rice’s team – Christopher’s Contingent, a group of South African Indians toured India for two months to play football and cricket. The Indian Football Association XI sent a team in 1934: they played 19 matches, mostly in Natal, against non-white South Africans.
India maintained a strong voice against the South African apartheid policies. The two teams did not meet at sports. They could have, in 1974, when they clashed in the final of the Davis Cup – a tournament not won any side other than Australia, Great Britain, the USA, and France until then. South Africa lifted the trophy – on walkover, after India chose to not travel.
India stood firm in their policies throughout the 1980s. There was no Indian side among the ‘rebel’ cricket teams the ones that toured South Africa in the 1980s. In fact, England’s 1981/82 tour of India got underway only after Geoff Boycott and Geoff Cook declared “repugnance to apartheid”.
However, when South Africa evolved from apartheid, India honoured Mandela with the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian honour in the country, rarely bestowed upon a non-Indian. And in 1991/92, they became the first country to host post-exile South Africa for a cricket tour.
This was a historical series in more ways than one, for this was also the first time the BCCI actually made money by selling telecast rights (US$ 120,000 for three ODIs), their first step towards using viewership as a tool to control the economy of the sport.
A year later, India became the first team to tour post-apartheid South Africa for yet another significant series: the Test series was the first to feature a television umpire. Some Indians on the tour – cricketers, officials, accompanying journalists – carried passports that still bore the words ‘Valid for travel to all countries except the Republic of South Africa’.
Over the years that followed, the two boards grew simultaneously as the respective nations experienced similar phases of international exposure: as South Africa rose above apartheid politics, India accepted globalisation through the liberal economic policies. At the ICC meeting of 1993, South Africa’s vote helped India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka clinch the hosting rights for the 1996 World Cup.
After the two teams beat each other on home soil in 1996/97, South Africa beat India 2-0 in 1999/00 on Indian soil. Barring the one-off Test match of 1979/80, this remains the only occasion when India were clean swept in a home series. Yet, the enormity of South Africa’s triumph was buried under the allegations of match-fixing against Hansie Cronje and Mohammad Azharuddin, men who led the nations almost for the entirety of the decade.
By the time India toured South Africa in 2001/02, the BCCI had emerged as a board powerful enough to challenge the penalties imposed by Mike Denness after the Test match at Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha). When the BCCI demanded Denness be sacked from the third Test, the United Cricket Board of South Africa supported them. The ICC had little option but to cave in, though they stripped the match of Test status.
India lost that series 1-0, but the equation between the two teams changed – on the field, as well. Until South Africa toured India in 2004/05, they had beaten India seven times in Test cricket and lost only twice. Since then, the count reads 13-10 in India’s favour. South Africa are still ahead, but India have cut down their lead to 17-15.
Between 2006 and 2015/16, during their famous invincible phase overseas, South Africa won Test series in England, Australia, West Indies, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh – but not India. However, they returned from the country without losing as well, in 2008 and 2010.
At the same time, India have won Test series in every country they have toured – but the Final Frontier remains unconquered. The Gandhi-Mandela Trophy, thus, promises a contest as intense as any.
