Ireland play the first of two T20 matches against South Africa in Abu Dhabi over the next few days with the opening game coming along on Friday ahead of an ODI series which gets underway in the same part of the world next week.
These two matches probably don’t mean a great deal for South Africa in terms of how far away the next World Cup is but they can be preparation for the ODI series. Ireland might take them more seriously as they may need to go through qualifying for the next T20 World Cup.
Ireland
We are still at the stage in the world game that whenever Ireland take on one of the big boys it is a big event for them. This is probably the format they are most established in because it is the one which the ICC have used the most to grow the game at the lower levels of the sport but they can use these matches against the big boys to feel comfortable when they get to World Cup tournaments. These two matches will be their first since their disappointing World Cup campaign back in June.
That gives them a bit of a point to prove. In that tournament they had the combination of struggling to score the necessary amount of runs needed to make sure that matches were more comfortable and they couldn’t maintain pressure on opposition sides when their change bowlers came along. Although this is a home series for them they are having to stage it in the UAE so they don’t even have familiar conditions to fall back on, although so much associate cricket takes place in this part of the world that the pitches won’t be completely alien to them.
South Africa
South Africa arrive in this series off the back of a largely disappointing three outings in an ODI series with Afghanistan last week so while their focus will be on getting up to speed in 50 over cricket ahead of the Champions Trophy which is rapidly beginning to close in, they might feel they have something of a point to prove in these two matches as well. They were World Cup finalists in this format just three months ago so we know they are a good T20 side.
Generally when South Africa are at their best in T20 cricket their batting is the reason for it. They have discovered a middle order that can tear any side in world cricket apart so it was probably to their credit that they were able to make the final in the USA and Caribbean on pitches which didn’t allow them to do that. Their bowling wasn’t great against Afghanistan last week though so there is definitely room for improvement there.
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Team News
The big news for Ireland is that Andrew Balbirnie has been left out of the squad for these two matches. Ireland are citing the requirement to be more dynamic at the top of the order. Josh Little isn’t involved either as he is at the Caribbean Premier League.
South Africa have brought a bit of a skeleton squad to Abu Dhabi with them for these matches. There is no Marco Jansen, Kagiso Rabada, Heinrich Klaasen, David Miller, Anrich Nortje, Tabraiz Shamzi or Keshav Maharaj so the likes of Jason Smith and Nqabayomzi Peter could get more chances to impress.
Betting
I think in this part of the world you always have to expect spin to play a bit of a role and that makes me think that the performance line of Aiden Markram might be something to consider. He is only playing the T20 matches against Ireland before he is rested for the three ODIs so you would think he would play a prominent role as South Africa ensure their star players have their workload managed. As captain in this format that would likely be the case anyway.
Markram comes into this series off the back of an ODI series where he picked up a wicket in the first two games against good players of spin from Afghanistan and then in the third game he scored 69* so he is in decent touch with the bat and the ball and as captain he’ll field in positions where the ball often comes so catches can’t be ruled out either. In four T20 innings against Ireland he has scores of 39, 8, 56 and 27 and he took a wicket the only time he bowled. He has catches in four of the five matches too so when you weigh that all up the 28.5 run performance line looks low.
Tips
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