The traditional and annual pink ODI takes place in Johannesburg on Sunday as South Africa and Pakistan meet for the second time in a series which became very interesting after the tourists got over the line in the first match on Friday.
That means they have the first of two opportunities to win the series here whereas South Africa begin the match knowing that they have to come out on top in it if they are to force a deciding contest later in the week. This is another match with World Cup qualifying points at stake too.
South Africa
There were positives and negatives over that first game for South Africa. The negative would be that they took themselves out of the game before they were ever in it when they lost a clump of early wickets but from there the positives were that they still got up to a score that you would have described as competitive, and then with the ball even when they looked out of the game they did all they could to try and rescue it.
I would call that opening performance a rusty one and so I would expect a lot of natural improvement here. That should have come anyway because they’ve not played an ODI for more than a year and a number of players depart after this game so you would think they would want to leave their mark on the series before they head off to the IPL. Given how close they took the first game, a tidier performance here could get them over the line.
Pakistan
Pakistan will be delighted with the win in the opening ODI. They probably wouldn’t have expected to be suited by conditions but they didn’t let that bother them as they got stuck in from the start and while they didn’t always maintain their dominance in the match, they were always in touch if not on top for the most part. They did their best to throw it away but came good when it mattered and set themselves up for a series win, either here or in the next game.
You would imagine there will be plenty of natural improvement in Pakistan in this match as well given that they haven’t been overly active in the ODI sphere for a while and also that they didn’t have a warm up match ahead of the series. They just need a repeat of what they offered up in Centurion on Friday with a little bit more of a clinical edge to it. If they can deliver that then they could be very hard to beat here.
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Team News
Although they will be forced into changes for the final match, South Africa are unlikely to make changes for this one as they look to get back into the series. If they do make a switch it might be to give Janneman Malan a run out before he is needed in the third game.
Pakistan might choose to strengthen their batting to attempt to stop another middle order collapse taking place. That might see Haider Ali coming into the side although whether they would want to take a bowling option away remains to be seen.
Betting
I expected a low scoring first match of the series but we didn’t really get that. I’m changing tack here at Johannesburg where the ground is one of the highest scoring grounds in the world and although we are pretty late on in the summer and the pitches might be getting tired, the forecast for that part of the world is very good for Sunday and with the short boundaries and the pitch often seeing the ball come onto the bat I just think we’ll see as many runs as we saw in that first game if not more.
The other reason why I think we’ll get as many, if not more, runs than that first game is because the batsmen have blown the cobwebs off. Pakistan’s players have had a taste of the conditions and the South African ones have had a hit against the Pakistan bowlers. I expect Pakistan to strength their batting for this match which should also allow them to score more runs. That first game had 547 runs in it so I’m a little surprised that we can get a 546.5 runs line for this game on a smaller ground renowned for high scores. I’ll play the over here.
Tips
WON – Back Over 546.5 runs for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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