South African captain Graeme Smith arrives at a hotel in Chennai on Saturday. The first Test begins on Wednesday. (Reuters)

Chennai: Captain Graeme Smith has admitted that the quota system — it’s mandatory to have 6 non-Whites in a squad of 14 and 4 of them should feature in the 11 — has affected his team (“it’s been disturbing”), but that’s not the South Africans’ top worry.

Not even Sachin Tendulkar.

The visitors’ No.1 concern is actually the presence of South Africans Gary Kirsten and Paddy Upton in the ranks of the Team India support staff.

While Kirsten, a one-time batting star, has just started his innings as coach, Upton is the mental conditioning expert. Both, of course, have worked with the Smiths in one capacity or the other and are privy to their weaknesses — real and imagined.

The South Africans, in fact, are more worried about Upton being in the Indian dressing room. So much so that coach Mickey Arthur has requested him not to divulge details which ought to remain “confidential.”

Upton was the visitors’ physical trainer from 1994 to 1998 and, since then, has worked with a lot of players as a mental conditioning expert — both at the behest of Cricket South Africa and on a personal level.

“I called up Paddy while we were in Bangladesh (recently) and made that request... He has promised he won’t reveal details which are of a confidential nature, say between a doctor and patient. Among other things, the players could have been honest about their insecurities... Those things have to be treated as confidential,” Arthur told The Telegraph on Saturday afternoon, soon after the team arrived for a three-Test series.

Kirsten, who has hand-picked Upton, pointed out that he certainly wouldn’t be “passing on information” and that “confidentiality” had to be respected.

Earlier, interacting with the media at the Taj Coromandal, Arthur didn’t read too much into Kirsten becoming Greg Chappell’s full-time successor.

“Yes, Gary has worked with most of our batsmen, but nowadays you’d expect every coach to know everything about the top 6 batsmen of the other teams... He’s a good coach and I wish him well,” Arthur, who has been around for three years, said.

Kirsten didn’t disagree with the first bit. “Today, with so much information available, nobody really needs to pass on anything...”

The South Africans, who’ve beaten Pakistan in Pakistan and won very convincingly in Bangladesh too, this season, arrived from Johannesburg via Dubai.

Footnote: Inclement weather forced Team India to only have a session of physical training at the Chepauk. As for the South Africans, they just had a pool session in their hotel. The first Test begins on Wednesday.