Only four Indian players who won the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup earlier in the year when they beat South Africa by 7-runs in the final are on tour to South Africa.

They are Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, and Arshdeep Singh. The rest are preparing for their upcoming Test series against Australia down-under.

By contrast, the Proteas have called up some of their biggest names in David Miller and Heinrich Klaasen, who are arguably two of the best T20 cricketers in the world, while the young former Knights fast bowler, Marco Jansen and Gerald Coetzee are back in the mix.

The former Knights batter Hendricks, who is the all-time leading scorer in domestic T20 cricket, said they are still in for a tough series as there is never a weak Indian team.

“Yeah, absolutely, with India, we’ve seen at the Indian Premier League all the names that’s coming through from there,” said Hendricks.

“There's definitely no such thing as a weak Indian team – they are producing, they have got a lot of players, so their depth is massive.

Hardik Pandya. Photo: Cricinfo

“I will be challenging, definitely an exciting series to be part of, and I’m sure there’ll be some good cricket on display.”

The 1st T20 International will be played tomorrow at Kingsmead in Durban. This game is scheduled to get underway at 17:00.

OFM Sport/Morgan Piek cg