South Africa to play against Board President's XI in Vizianagaram ahead of Tests with Team India

The South African team will play a three-day game against the Board President's XI in the Andhra coastal town of Vizianagaram before the first of their three Tests against Virat Kohli & Co in neighbouring Visakhapatnam.

The three-day game will be from September 25 with the Gandhi-Mandela Freedom Trophy Test series starting, rather fittingly, on October 2.

The other two Tests are in Pune and Ranchi from October 10 and 19.

Vizianagaram has been chosen as the venue for the three-day game because of its proximity to the first Test centre, the Rajiv Gandhi VDCA Stadium. With the distance between the wo cities being less than 40km, the visitors can commute from Visakhapatnam itself.

The Board President's XI team will be picked after the Duleep Trophy final, which starts on September 4in Bangalore.

Before the start of the three-day game, the South Africans will play three Twenty20 internationals against India on September 15, 18 and 22 in Dharamsala, Mohali and Bangalore.

Meanwhile, MSK Prasad's selection committee, asked to pick the support staff for the Indian team, interviewed candidates for the trainer's post. A final decision has still not been made but early indications are that one of the three foreign candidates -- Luke Woodhouse, Grant Luden and Nick Webb - could get the nod.

There are two Indians -- Rajnikanth Sivagnanam and Anand Date -in the fray too but the performance of the foreigners is understood to have impressed the selection committee.

A BCCI source has revealed to this paper it is happy with the choice available.

With head coach Ravi Shastri known to be preferring all Indians in his support staff, Rajnikanth was considered a hot favourite for the job. But the selection committee is understood to be holding a different view. Skipper Kohli, it is learnt, wanted the best possible candidate with no preference for any nationality.