Although India may not have a reputation for producing a large number of high-caliber fast bowlers over the course of its history, the subcontinental powerhouse has nonetheless fielded a number of exceptional pacemen in its cricket team over the years.

In light of this, and in anticipation of India's highly anticipated tour of South Africa, we will now examine the top five pace bowlers that India has ever produced and rank them according to the level of greatness that they possessed.

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5 – Venkatesh Prasad (1994-2001)

During the mid-1990s, he and fellow fast bowler Javagal Srinath forged a sometimes lethal new-ball tandem. This was especially true when Prasad competed outside of the subcontinent, where his results in both games were far better than those obtained under domestic circumstances.

Prasad's greatest strength was his ability to move the ball both ways, which he demonstrated admirably when he toured England in 1996. On the other hand, his most effective spell of all time was in Chennai against Pakistan's arch-rivals. This occurred during the first Test of the 1999 series, when he recorded six for 33, including an extraordinary second-innings stretch of five for none at one stage.

However, Prasad really excelled for his nation in the one-day format, where his deceptively slower ball frequently gave him great success while his persistent accuracy always made him difficult to score off.

4 – Ajit Agarkar (1998-2007)

An at times outstanding and frequently underrated fast-medium bowler who was afflicted by injury at various periods throughout his career, which no doubt stopped him from going on to make the most of his ability with the ball. His career was cut short by injuries at various points.

And it is primarily due to his eye-catching form in the 50-over game that Agarkar has made it onto this list. In his 191 matches, he amassed a staggeringly impressive 288 wickets in total, and at the time, he was the fastest player ever to have captured 50 ODI victims. In total, he picked up a total of 288 victims.

On the other hand, you can't help but get the impression that the multi-talented performer could have accomplished even more in his lifetime.

3 – Javagal Srinath (1991-2003)

At the time of his retirement from international cricket, only the legendary Kapil Dev had more Test wickets among Indian pacemen than Srinath had (although Zaheer Khan would later surpass that record), and no fast bowler has ever taken more wickets in one-day internationals than he did (315).

In the early stages of his career, Srinath relied heavily on the off-cutter, particularly when playing in conditions that were typical of the subcontinent. He was surprisingly swift for an Indian seamer and was possibly even the quickest seamer that his nation has ever produced.

However, as he got older and wiser, he added the away swinger to his arsenal, which doubled his effectiveness as a bowler. This allowed him to score twice as many wickets as he had previously.

As with a good bottle of wine, Srinath only became better with age, as seen by the mesmerizing performances he delivered for his country in the tournament that served as his swan song, the World Cup in South Africa in 2003.

2 – Zaheer Khan (2000-2012)

An intriguing bowler whose second half of his career stood in stark contrast to the first, during which he was primarily erratic with the ball and afflicted by both hamstring and back ailments. The second half of his career was a real bowling enigma.

However, after a career-changing time in county cricket with Worcestershire in the summer of 2006, during which Zaheer grabbed an amazing 78 wickets, the swing bowler started excelling in both forms of the game similarly to how the famous Pakistani left-arm Wasim Akram performed during his prime.

And Zaheer's real skill was not so much about how much he got the ball to swing, although that was a major part of his armory; rather, it was more about the control he was able to exert and the innate ability he seemed to have about how and when exactly to go about dismissing opposition batsmen. This was a major part of his arsenal.