Steyn looks to exploit inexperienced middle order

South Africa's pace spearhead Dale Steyn has a thin smile on his face as he agrees South Africa have an edge going into the first Test in Nagpur, with the Indian team jolted by injuries to Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj Singh, and uncertainty over VVS Laxman's participation as well.

"Look, I guess you could say, yes, in the absence of guys like Yuvraj, Rahul and Laxman, all with massive experience," Steyn said about pressure on India's middle order, which could feature two first-timers in S Badrinath and Rohit Sharma. "If they play a couple of debutants, obviously that will play in our favour."

But Steyn is not getting carried away. According to him, even the replacements can rise to the occasion, inspired by the call of duty. "At the Test level, you never replace an experienced player with someone who is average or borderline. You always replace him with somebody that has got equal quality."

The world's best Test spearhead is clear the Indian batting's WMDs are located at the top of the order. He understands that Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir have the ability to cause damage to the South African fast bowling, which is thin on experience. On form, the visitors are likely to field a three-man pace attack comprising Steyn, Morne Morkel and left-armer Wayne Parnell, whose combined experience of 58 Tests is 12 short of the opposition strike bowler Zaheer Khan.

Interestingly, Steyn could be a steely character charging in with ball in hand, but with just 48 hours left for the bell to ring on the world championship tussle, he refused to reveal his prime targets. "Sehwag is a challenge but I am not going to single out Sehwag because Tendulkar is also a marvelous player and he has shown what a record he has got and Gambhir too. So it's not specifically Sehwag that we are afraid of - not to say that we are afraid of anybody."

Essentially, according to him, the Indian team has more than one key batsman but the South Africans were prepared exploit their biggest weaknesses based on their prior experience.

Two years ago, Steyn partnered Makhaya Ntini and Morkel, and the trio were tested on a gamut of pitches across India: in Chennai they were man-handled and flattened by Sehwag's triple-century on a slow Chepauk pitch; they bounced back on a green surface at Motera where the Indian first innings folded in a record 109 minutes; a dubious surface (according to Steyn a "bunsen burner") allowed India to level the series in Kanpur and dent South Africa's soaring journey.

Steyn, the second-highest wicket-taker in the 2008 series, has mixed memories of the previous tour. "India was the only place where we came and wanted to win, and we fell so short over the last hurdle at Kanpur. It's something that we remember. It hurt us because we were playing good cricket, and we definitely want to be able to try and fix that up again."

Even if South Africa's captain Graeme Smith said he was impressed by India's rapid progress over the nine years he has been visiting the country, he and his team would not have such high praise for the pitches which have drawn flak from the ICC on quite a few occasions in the recent past. The surface at the new VCA stadium is reportedly a bald plate, and to borrow a headline from one of the South African newspapers, Steyn and co. would have to spill blood on it to find any purchase.

Steyn had no illusions about finding the same movement and bounce the hosts got at the Wanderers recently, where they overcame England to level a drama-filled series 1-1.

"The biggest thing about India is that you have to hit the deck," he said. "However, the aggression and the way that we bowl does not change. The bowler himself, his attitude towards the game, towards each and every delivery he bowls doesn't change at all, regardless of the pitch. It's the skill and the planning behind the delivery that counts at the end of the day."

Morkel is in a much more positive frame of mind after the harsh lessons learnt two years back. Fresh from having finished second in the wickets tally in the England series, he reckoned the best way to prosper in India would be to register maximum clicks with the ball. "The wickets can be up and down, and with the ball reversing, if you can hit the deck hard and get inconsistent bounce, you can be just as dangerous as the spinners," Morkel said. "You have got to bowl fast. It's a matter of trying to bowl at the stumps, with the ball either bouncing or keeping low, if you bowl fast."

Steyn pointed out that if India had ideas of preparing spin-friendly tracks, it could prove detrimental to Zaheer, who he reckoned was India's best bowler with his ability to get both conventional and reverse swing. "For them to prepare a wicket where it is ripping square and turning square would be - I don't want to use the word 'foolish' because I know these are the conditions that work well for spinners - but their in-form bowler is definitely Zak. If they want to take somebody like him out of the game just to try and beat us, then that's a feather in our cap already."