SA's top four - 12 Tests, 14 hundreds

One of the reasons that South Africa have been among the best, if not the best, touring Test sides in India in the last 20 years - their win-loss ratio of 1.0 in Tests in India is matched only by Pakistan - is because of their top four batsmen. South Africa's top order has averaged 45.72 in Tests in India, which is the best among overseas teams in the last-20 years.

South Africa pull well ahead of other teams when it comes to just their top four: they have averaged 52.81 from 12 Tests. The closest any other team come to their record is Sri Lanka, whose top four have averaged 46.44. But an aspect where South Africa's batsmen have left other teams miles behind is in the conversion of the starts: out of the 26 times the top-order batsmen have made a fifty, they have gone on to make a hundred on 14 instances. Their conversion rate of 53.8% is by far the best among any of the visitors.

Visiting teams that have done well in India seem to have had their top-four pulling their weight with big scores. Pakistan who did well to draw their 2004-05 series in India, had four hundreds - two of them scores of 180-plus - and six fifties from their top four in three Tests. In contrast, Australia - not always a happy visiting side in India with a win-loss record of 4-13 - have had their top four convert only nine of their 39 fifties into hundreds - a much inferior conversion rate of 23.1%.

South Africa's top four have done better than other teams in getting the big hundreds too. As many as six of the 17 150-plus scores by the top-four batsmen of visiting teams have come from them. It is a factor that is likely to have contributed to South Africa's good record in India, considering only two of these 17 scores - Matthew Hayden's 203 in the 2001 Chennai Test and Alastair Cook's 176 following-on in Ahmedabad in 2012 - have come in losses for the overseas sides.