When a touring team features a tweaker who's the fastest to 300 test wickets, the hosts have every right to be quaking in their boots.
The spinner, Ravichandran Ashwin, has 304 scalps in 55 tests but 220 have been at home in 35 matches.
There's also the threat of Ravindra Jadeja.
Only 34 of his 165 wickets have been collected away.
Former Proteas left-arm spinner Paul Harris said these statistics point to the toothlessness of these tweakers on the road, but parched Cape Town could give them reasonable conditions.
South Africa's less amiable surfaces won't allow Virat Kohli to pick both and Harris said Jadeja could be picked ahead of Ashwin.
"In our conditions, they'll have to pick one and I think that'll be Jadeja. He spins the ball away from the right-hander and he's quicker through the air. He's difficult to score off and he's hard to get away. One does hope the pitches don't suit spin bowlers but India also have good seamers so pitch preparation has to be precise," Harris said.Seamer rotation is going to be paramount in South Africa, especially looking at the fact that India may pick five fast bowlers if the conditions are going to be helpful.During the 2013/14 second test in Durban, Jadeja rifled through 58.2 overs of South Africa's marathon 155.2-over first innings, collecting a then career-best 6/138.
It was Ashwin who had to make way for Jadeja after the tall offspinner was rendered irrelevant by a South African batting unit stopping eight runs short of making chasing history...