Possible Test Team for the South Africa Series

Let us first start with the team that we have for the West Indies series

MS Dhoni, Dhawan, Vijay, Pujara, Sachin, Kohli, Rohit, Rahane, Ashwin, Ojha, Mishra, Bhuvaneshwar, Shami, Umesh and Ishant

Now that Sachin is retiring we can safely presume that Rahane will take his place in XI. 

The following members should be a shoo in into the team. 

MS Dhoni, Dhawan, Vijay, Pujara, Kohli, Rohit, Rahane, Ashwin, Bhuvaneshwar, Shami, Umesh, Ojha(not sure if he will get a chance to play in the XI)

Mishra - Don't think he will get selected. We don't need more than 1 spinner for the 2 test matches at Durban and Jo'burg.  The second spinner will definitely be Ojha. 

Ishant - He is lucky to be in the team for this series. 

That leaves either 3 members - 1 Fast Bowler, 1 Batsman and 1 backup keeper or backup opener

Fast Bowler - Do we go with Zaheer Khan or blood some youngster like Jaydev Unadkat or Ishwar Pandey? Zak did decently well in the first match of this season but not much in the second. I would personally prefer someone like Ishwar Pandey. He was the top wicket taker of the last ranji season and has started decently with 12 wickets in the first 2 matches this season. 

Batsman - This could be tricky, do we go with someone like Raina (who himself tweets that he has to be in the test team) or blood some youngster. Let us look at some of the top scorers of last season - CM Gautam, Jiwanjot Singh, Parthiv Patel & Abhishek Nayar. Except for Parthiv(who has scored a couple of 50s this season) others have not done much this season in both Duleep Trophy and in the first 2 rounds of Ranji. That leaves us with the option of the guys who are currently doing well. There are 2 youngsters who are doing exceedingly well - Baba Aparajith(2 double centuries and 1 century) and Sanju Samson(1 double century and 1 century). We can also add Vijay Zol to the list.  All three are very young and not sure if the selectors will select any of them. 

Parthiv patel or a Wridhiman Saha could be the back up keeper. In case the selectors chose to pick a back up keeper. In case they go in for a back up opener then it could be Gambhir (they will not select him unless he will be in the XI, which I dont think will happen) or a Jiwanjot Singh. The other option of a Abhinav Mukund has not done much for a while now. I would probably go with Saha. 

The 3 members for me would be Ishwar Pandey, Baba Aparajith and Wridhiman Saha. 

My 15 will be MS Dhoni, Dhawan, Vijay, Pujara, Kohli, Rohit, Rahane, Ashwin, Bhuvaneshwar, Shami, Umesh, Ojha, IC Pandey, Baba Aparajith and Saha