India bowling coach Morne Morkel has asked the team’s fast bowlers to quickly adjust to the conditions in Sri Lanka, where heat, humidity and a Kookaburra ball that is expected to soften early could make life difficult.

India will be without Jasprit Bumrah for the two-Test series after the pacer was ruled out with a knee injury. That leaves Mohammed Siraj as the most experienced bowler in the pace attack. Prasidh Krishna, Gurnoor Brar and newly added Auqib Nabi are the other seam-bowling options available to India.

Morkel feels the conditions in Sri Lanka will require the bowlers to change their plans once the ball starts losing its hardness.

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“Our skill is there, and the planning will be there, but the biggest challenge coming to Sri Lanka is the heat, the humidity, and the Kookaburra ball going soft a little earlier. It will go soft after 25 or 30 overs, so we have to expect that. In these conditions, it’s all about your mindset. If you’re a fast bowler, if you’re going to bowl the shortest spells, the energy you put into the ball and putting it into good areas -- you’ll always have opportunity,” Morkel said, as quoted by Cricinfo.

According to Morkel, India’s seamers will need to make the most of the ball when it is still hard and capable of offering more assistance. Once it gets older and softer, they will have to find different ways to keep the pressure on the batters.

“As the Test match will go on, hopefully there will be a little bit of uneven bounce. It’s about how we can stack up overs together with intensity and create that pressure because we haven’t played a lot of red-ball cricket in the last couple of months; going back into that is going to be a challenge as well,” he said.

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The former South Africa pacer also believes that bowling hard into the pitch and consistently hitting good lengths can still trouble batters in Sri Lanka. However, he knows the bowlers will have to be more creative once the Kookaburra ball becomes soft.

“Even in our playing days, I thought if you hit the deck hard here, you are asking lots of questions on a good length, you’re always in the chance of picking up results,” Morkel said.

“When the ball goes soft, what is our next step? We have to be street smart in terms of how we’re going to use the crease or how we’re going to use our short ball. We need to be able to do some of that quite quickly,” he added.

The first Test will begin in Galle on August 15, with the second Test set to be played in Colombo from August 23.