Beware of SA : Amarnath

South Africa go to the field in full strength. All teams should beware of them, says Mohinder Amarnath. They meet WI today.

The cricketing fraternity gives 80% chance to SA and 20% to WI on current form. In the last ten matches, SA won all.

WI cannot be written off easily. They have the greatest matchwinner in contemporary cricket, Chris Gayle. K Pollard and Dwayne Bravo are all matchwinners. If Gayle is in form, heaven help the opposition.

SA on the other hand have powerful batsmen and bowlers. Kallis, Duminy, De Villiers, Amla and Smith form a formdidable batting line up. Morket, Steyn and Tsosobe from a deadly pace attack. The only negative factor is that they lack allrounders, apart from Kallis. Their spin attack also has not actualised potential. Botha, Peterson and Tahir are the spinners, but they are yet to be tested in Indian conditions.

The subcontinental tracks are different from the SA pitches and it has to be seen how their formidable batting copes up with spinners. The subcontinental teams will try to ambush them with spin and spin can be their Achilles heel. With pace the subcontinental teams cannot expect much success against their batsmen, who play pace very well. Give them medium pace bowlers and they will thrash them to all parts of the ground.

SA, therefore, is a giant side and a threat to any opposition.

The two top batsmen according to ICC Rankings are Amla and DeVilliers. Both are in the SA team. No team dare underestimate their batting strength.

However the cunnning subcontinental teams have a method to humiliate the greatest of batsmen. In early days, the deadly trio of Bedi, Prasanna and Chandra spun out the greatest teams on Indian wickets ! Spin was India's forte . It is only now India has a respectable medium pace attack in Zaheer, Munaf and Sreeshant !