Toss: South Africa chose to bat v India
South Africa handed Lungi Ngidi, the 21-year-old Titans fast bowler, a Test debut on his home ground and chose to bat first in the second Test against India. Ngidi replaced Dale Steyn, who has been ruled out of the series with a heel injury. It was the only change to the South African line-up on a Centurion pitch that looked drier and browner than the strip that hosted the first Test in Cape Town.
India made three changes. One was forced, a hamstring niggle forcing out Wriddhiman Saha and transferring the wicketkeeping gloves to Parthiv Patel. KL Rahul, meanwhile, replaced Shikhar Dhawan at the top of the order and Ishant Sharma’s “extra bounce” won him a place ahead of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who missed out despite taking 4 for 87 and 2 for 33 in Cape Town.
South Africa: 1 Dean Elgar, 2 Aiden Markram, 3 Hashim Amla, 4 AB de Villiers, 5 Faf du Plessis (capt), 6 Quinton de Kock (wk), 7 Vernon Philander, 8 Keshav Maharaj, 9 Kagiso Rabada, 10 Lungi Ngidi, 11 Morne Morkel.
India: 1 M Vijay, 2 KL Rahul, 3 Cheteshwar Pujara, 4 Virat Kohli (capt), 5 Rohit Sharma, 6 Parthiv Patel (wk), 7 Hardik Pandya, 8 R Ashwin, 9 Mohammed Shami, 10 Ishant Sharma, 11 Jasprit Bumrah.
Karthik Krishnaswamy is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo