India vs South Africa Test Series was held in India in which India won the 3 match series by 3-0. It was the first time that India whitewashed South Africa in the history of Test cricket. The South Africa cricket team toured India from September 15, 2019, to play 3 test matches and 3 Twenty 20 International series (match drawn).
Key Points:
i.The Test series formed part of the 1st Edition of 2019–21 International Cricket Council (ICC) World Test Championships of Test cricket.
ii.The captain of the Indian team was Virat Kohli and of the South African team was Faf du Plessis.
iii. Rohit Sharma of India was named as the Player of the series.
iv.Through the win against South Africa, India is on top position in the ICC World Test Championship table gaining a maximum of 120 points with each Test worth 40 points. The top two teams at the end of the league will play the final in the United Kingdom in June 2021 with the winners crowned as the World Test Champions.
Records/Achievements:
Indian opener Mayank Agarwal (28), in his maiden test match, scored 215 runs. He also hit a century in the second test match (108 runs from 183 balls).
Virat Kohli
- Virat Kohli, aged 30, became the first Indian to score 40 international hundreds as a captain during the 2nd Test match. It was his 26th Test century (81 matches). Australia’s Ricky Ponting has the most international hundreds with 41 centuries as team’s captain.
- He scored his record-breaking seventh double hundred in the 2nd Test match scoring unbeaten 254, his career’s best. With this, he surpassed the record held by Indian batsmen Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag who scored 6 double centuries.
- He surpassed former Australia cricketer Don Bradman’s record of the most number of 150 plus scores as captain in international cricket in the 2nd test match. The former has nine scores of 150 plus while captaining India, whereas the latter had eight scores of more than 150.
Rohit Sharma
- Rohit Sharma, aged 32, hit his maiden double hundred in the 3rd test match scoring 212 from 255 balls. With this, he became the first Indian batsman to have scored 500 plus runs against South Africa.
- In the 1st test match, he broke the 25 year record held by India’s Navjot Singh Sidhu (8 sixes) to hit the most number of sixes in a Test match for India by hitting 10 sixes. In the same match, he broke Pakistani Wasim Akram’s (12 sixes) 23-year old record by hitting the most number of sixes in a Test match with his 13 sixes.
- In the 3rd test match, he broke the record for registering the most number of sixes by hitting 16 in total, surpassing the record held by West Indies batsman Shimron Hetmyer (15 sixes).
- He became only the second Indian opener to score three or more centuries in a Test series, first being Sunil Gavaskar.
- He surpassed the batting average of Australia’s Don Bradman in Test cricket on home soil in the 3rd test match. He has an average of 99.84 in 18 innings (1298 runs), which is the highest by any player (with minimum 10 innings) in the longest format at home. Bradman had an average of 98.22 across 50 innings at home (4322 runs).
- He also became the third Indian player after Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag to score double hundred in both Test and ODI (One Day International). For the record, Rohit has three double hundreds in 50-over format.
- He became the only Indian opener to score a century in all formats as an opener batsman and also the eighth batsman in the world to score a century in Tests, ODIs and T20Is after West Indies’ Chris Gayle, New Zealand’s Brendon McCullum, New Zealand’s Martin Guptill, Sri Lanka’s Tillakaratne Dilshan, Pakistan’s Ahmed Shehzad, Australia’s Shane Watson and Bangladesh’s Tamim Iqbal.
- He became the third Indian to reach the top 10 in all three formats after captain Virat Kohli and retired opener Gautam Gambhir. He advanced 12 places to 10th position in the ICC Test Player Rankings.
Other facts:
i.Most runs in the test series were scored by Rohit Sharma (529) from Indian side and Dean Elgar (232) from South African team.
ii.Most wickets in the test series were taken by Ravichandran Ashwin (15) from Indian side and Kagiso Rabada (7) from South African team.
Venues of test series:
| Test | Dates | Venue |
| Test 1 | 2–6 October 2019 | Dr. Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy ACA–VDCA Cricket Stadium, Visakhapatnam |
| Test 2 | 10–14 October 2019 | Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Pune |
| Test 3 | 19–23 October 2019 | Jharkhand States Cricket Association (JSCA) International Cricket Stadium, Ranchi |
About ICC:
♦ Motto: Cricket for good
♦ Headquarters: Dubai, United Arab Emirates
♦ Chairman: Shashank Manohar
♦ CEO: Manu Sawhney