The Proteas are tourists who come to India without any hang-ups. They came first in the early ’90s as the ideal tourists who were prepared to look at the country with an open mind when they had just emerged from international isolation.

They may seem to be in disarray at the moment with a change in coach but it would be perilous for Team India to take them lightly.

Graeme Smith is tough as teak, has always been so. Ushered into the job early in his career, he has really hardened into one of those leading characters straight out of a Wilbur Smith novel. He gives the impression he won’t be out of place in the wild in his native Africa.

Having chosen his own path in steering away from Mickey Arthur in partnership with whom he achieved what is considered the pinnacle in modern cricket — beating Australia Down Under in a Test series — Smith has now to begin the process of proving he was right.

Up against him and his Proteas are Indian conditions. It’s unlikely they will be gifted the heavy watering that gave their seamers the upper hand in Ahmedabad on their last tour. Of course, they do play at the Eden Gardens where Lance Klusener, in 1996 a debutant, bowled India out twice to create a famous win, South Africa’s first in the sub-continent.

Team India then did what they usually do in ordering a designer spin pitch on which the visitors’ batting was so nonplussed as to make it a non-contest, with Kanpur’s Green Park being the villain once again. The same ground had featured the spin pitch on which Hansie Cronje’s men were ambushed in the 1996 series.

There was, however, some disbelief at the ease with which Cronje’s men capitulated. Best to conclude that in those times it was never easy to reason why. There were such ugly whispers at that time about the activities of the bookmakers who obviously had a line of communication open to Cronje. That, of course, is well in the past. The same Cronje returned as a hero early towards the start of the new millennium when his team conquered the final frontier. This he achieved even before Australia began talking up their ambition of winning out here, which they were to do much later under Ponting and Gilchrist.

What made the difference was essentially the attitude. The Proteas did not come here with preconceived notions that you can’t east the food or drink the water or even breathe the air. They did not live on canned food as Shane Warne was said to have on endless supplies of baked beans and pasta shipped out from Victoria. The South Africans made a real effort to understand the culture and the cuisine. They made it a point to try out Indian curries in restaurants across their homeland, particularly Durban, before their tour of India. They could complain about the long evening hours spent in hotels, of which there will probably be more in these times of heightened security awareness but they took all other things in their stride.

With the No. 1 Test ranking up for grabs, the current series has so much more hanging on it. Team India cannot afford to sit on their laurels because the lead on points can disappear pretty quickly if they do not win home series. In modern cricket no team likes to go into a Test thinking a draw is possible. One bad session is sufficient to cede the advantage.

A bunch of toughened tourists, many of whom have also experienced India in the first IPL, are all geared up mentally to take on what Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s team can throw at them. The stakes are indeed very high with the Test mace being a prized symbol of supremacy that has been prised out of Aussie hands only recently. The Proteas did it while India took the mace out of their hands. A crackerjack of a series is about to unfold now.

R. Mohan