Cape Town - Proteas captain Dean Elgar has admitted that "ideally you want to bat first on this surface" after India counterpart Virat Kohli opted to take first strike in the series-deciding Test at Newlands on Tuesday morning.
"Ideally you want to bat first on this surface and given the overhead conditions it might not be a bad idea to bowl first," Elgar said.
"The cricket we have been playing the last few months been very special given the number of players we lost. The one good thing about having younger guys is they don't come with scars.
"Guys like me have a bit of old-school mentality which we try to balance and implement that with what we have in the change room."
The Proteas are unchanged from the team that pulled off a memorable seven-wicket victory at the Wanderers last week.
"We're unchanged, what we've done in the last Test, got to give players credit in terms of balance and stability," Elgar said.
India have made two changes with Kohli returning to the lineup for Hanuma Vihari and Umesh Yadav replaces the injured Mohammad Siraj.
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Runs on the board has worked out well, we need to put runs on the board and then utilise the skills of our bowlers after that," Kohli said.
"Luckily my spasm healed in about three days, gutted it happened before the morning of the previous game. Fit and fine now. IT was a tough decision between Ishant and Umesh. Umesh is bowling amazingly well. We've got great bench strength."
Teams for Newlands
South Africa: Dean Elgar (capt), Aiden Markram, Keegan Petersen, Rassie van der Dussen, Temba Bavuma, Kyle Verreynne(w), Marco Jansen, Kagiso Rabada, Keshav Maharaj, Duanne Olivier, Lungi Ngidi.
India: KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli(c), Ajinkya Rahane, Rishabh Pant(w), Ravichandran Ashwin, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Umesh Yadav.