South African pacer Morne Morkel today fired the first salvo ahead of the two-match Test series, starting here December 18, stating that the young Indian batsmen will miss 'Sachin Tendulkar's patience' in the middle and they should be prepared to face some hostile bowling from the home side.
Morkel said it would be interesting to see how the young Indian batsmen cope with the South African pace battery now that the likes of Tendulkar are not in the visiting team.
"Sachin was a batsman who could bat for a long time. And he put the bowlers and the opposition under pressure by batting for a long time. He was the rock for their batting. He could bat with the top-order and the middle order both," said Morkel two days ahead of the first Test.
"These young Indian batsmen are quality players, but we can clearly see from the ODI series that they are attacking batsmen who like to come at the bowling. It will be interesting to see how they go about this," he added.
Tendulkar retired from all forms of cricket after playing his 200th Test against the West Indies in Mumbai last month. His departure left a huge void in the Indian team and that will be most visible when the Test series begins.
"Like I said, they are all very quality guys. Rohit Sharma has been scoring runs off late and Cheteshwar Pujara can bat for time at number three. Even R Aswhin averages 40 at the back-end of their line-up. So we need to make use of the early morning conditions with the new ball. We need to be on the money from Wednesday itself, otherwise they can score quickly and at Wanderers, sometimes it can be a high scoring game," he said.
Asked specifically if he left out Virat Kohli's name on purpose and that South Africa might not consider him a threat, Morkel was non-committal at best.
