(Cricket news) With both sides losing their first match, both South Africa and West Indies will be desperate to get some points on the table. Both the sides will be hoping to produce a good batting performance after their horror show in their first matches. So the two line-ups will hope to sing a redemption song when they clash in Dubai today.
For West Indies the major inquest needs to be done on their batting as in the previous match both the England spinners enjoyed a field day against the West Indies batters. In the last match, Moeen Ali and Rashid finished with 6/19 in a combined 6.2 overs, the same can be expected with South Africa as they too have two quality spinners in the form of Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi, the batters need to improve and tackle the threat of spin and help post a decent total at least. The West Indies mantra has always been ‘go big or go home’ but something drastic needs to change as this aggressive style is clearly not working for them, the batters need to give them some time and assess the situation before going big. The management need to think about bringing in Roston Chase as an extra spin option as we saw in the last match how much help Akeal Hosein got off the pitch picking up three wickets.
South Africa will be hoping that they have a better batting display as they will hope to take some positives out of the Australia game as the bowling and fielding effort of the team was top notch. In the batting department, Quinton de Kock needs to get back to form as he has failed to reach 30 in his last 6 T20 innings, but his batting average is 14.25 against Dwayne Bravo and 28.20 against Andre Russell in this format which could give him the added confidence boost that he needs. In the last match, Anrich Nortje continued his good form as he caused a lot of problems to the Australian batsmen and will again be the key if they are to restrict the West Indies big hitter, a slight concern for the management can be that West Indies have a lot of left handers in their team as both the South African spinners are left handed which could be an advantage for them. The spinners need to be perfect with their line and length because if these West Indies batters get going then there is no stopping them.
Head to head: South Africa 9 – 6 West Indies (2-1 in T20 world cup games)
Pitch and weather report: The Dubai venue has been very unpredictable in the last two matches but the trend of winning the toss and bowling first will continue as the temperatures will increase as the day progresses which make it difficult for the bowlers to grip the ball with all that sweat and humidity. A target of 150 would seem to be the par score in this tournament. The temperature will hover around at 34 degrees, with no chances of rain.
Interesting facts:
- Roston Chase has had a superb CPL with a batting strike rate of 144.3 and a bowling economy rate of 6.92 in this year's CPL.
- Reeza Hendricks needs seven runs to complete 1000 runs in T20 and will only become the seventh South African to do so
- Chris Gayle has a strike rate of 177.94 in T20s against South Africa
- South Africa and West Indies have faced each other three times at T20 World Cups, in 2007, 2009 and 2016 and West Indies have only won the last of those.
Also read: Afghanistan defeat Scotland by 130 runs at the T20 World Cup
Probable XI for West Indies;
1 Lendl Simmons, 2 Evin Lewis, 3 Chris Gayle, 4 Shimron Hetmyer/Roston Chase, 5 Nicholas Pooran (wk), 6 Kieron Pollard (capt), 7 Andre Russell, 8 Dwayne Bravo 9 Akeal Hosein, 10 Obed McCoy, Ravi Rampaul
Probable XI for South Africa:
1 Quinton de Kock (wk), 2 Temba Bavuma (capt), 3 Aiden Markram, 4 Rassie van der Dussen, 5 David Miller, 6 Heinrich Klaasen/Reeza Hendricks, 7 Kagiso Rabada, 8 Keshav Maharaj, 9 Lungi Ngidi, 10 Anrich Nortje, 11 Tabraiz Shamsi
