Kemp ready to adapt for new conditions

The South African allrounder, Justin Kemp, is backing himself to adapt to the conditions in India, when the five-match one-day series begins on Wednesday. The pitches, likely to be fairly slow and offer assistance for the spinners, will provide a different challenge from the surfaces where he has had success in South Africa.

"No one is under any illusion it's going to be easy and Indians have quality seamers and spinners," Kemp told Reuters following South Africa's warm-up win against a Hyderabad XI. "I don't think it is going to be one massive problem, but it's just going to be good, hard cricket."

Kemp has shown an ability to come racing out of the blocks at the start of an innings but is aware that he will need to adapt his game on this tour. "These are not the kinds of wickets where you can come in and hit from ball one. I've still got a lot to learn but hopefully I can turn one or two games here."

Kemp has maintained an impressive strike rate with the bat of 98.07 in 37 ODIs and was man-of-the-series against New Zealand with a strike rate of 125.

With the ability to play such destructive innings Kemp is being compared with Lance Klusener, who had such a memorable impact on the 1999 World Cup. But Kemp plays down the similarities: "Lance was a phenomenal cricketer", he said, "With the feats that he achieved, I can only dream of that at the moment. What I do is try and play like Justin Kemp.

"I play each game as it comes. It [the sixes] gets you a bit of publicity, but along with it comes a bit of pressure."