The T20 series between South Africa and Pakistan continues on Friday when the middle match of the scheduled three is played out with the two sides heading to Centurion to see where the Proteas can win the series at the first time of asking.
South Africa came out on top in the opening game in Durban and they are now the favourites to secure the series before the final match on Saturday but Pakistan are a proud side and you sense they are going to have something to say about it.
South Africa
I think we could tell where this series lies in the overall list of priorities for South Africa even though they made the final of the T20 World Cup earlier in the year just by looking at the squad they have chosen for it. They are still in contention to make it into the final of the World Test Championship and the Champions Trophy is getting ever closer so the T20 format looks to have been assigned the back seat for now so for them to win the opening game was a decent effort.
South Africa were grateful that a David Miller masterclass got them up to a score which they could defend even though their bowling attack for this series is very much an inexperienced one. Despite their inexperience, those bowlers got Pakistan under pressure early and made the most of the advantage that they had created. This place is a graveyard for the bowlers so they will need to hang tough here but if they can do that they could well survive to tell the tale.
Pakistan
I think Pakistan will have been disappointed to lose the opening match of the series. They just looked the stronger side on paper and will have fancied their chances of that being shown out on the field but it wasn’t the case. To be fair to Pakistan, they arrived in South Africa off the back of a series with Zimbabwe in which they weren’t really tested so they might just have been caught out by the elevation in the level and now they know what is needed they will be better for it.
What will have annoyed Pakistan is they looked to be in complete control of the situation when they had South Africa 28-3, 71-4 and 104-5 but they couldn’t been the foot on the throat and in the end they allowed South Africa to get up to 183 which was probably 15 too many anyway but a good 30 more than they should have got from the position they were in. Pakistan gave it a go with the bat but the innings fell away a little too tamely in the second part of the innings.
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Team News
South Africa confirmed that Anrich Nortje would play no part in the series because of a toe injury so they might well be unchanged for this one. If they were looking to make changes then Ottneil Baartman and Patrick Kruger would be looking to come in.
The Pakistan batting ran out a little too quickly for comfort in the opening match so they might choose to reinforce their order with the addition of someone like Salman Agha who would also provide a bowling option.
Betting
We saw a high scoring match in Durban on Tuesday which would suggest that we are going to get another of those here in Centurion where as we know the pitch is usually always good for batting and the ball flies a little further at altitude. These two have already played out a match on this ground where both teams scored 200 and when you consider that 183 played 172 in the first game when the likes of Reeza Hendricks, Rassie van der Dussen, Matthew Breetzke, Donovan Ferreira and Babar Azam all made single figures there is more to come.
This South Africa bowling unit is very much a second string one and there is more to come from the power players in their batting order which makes me think that this will be a high scoring game. There were 43 boundaries in that first match and this is a smaller ground where the ball flies further so the three more required to cover a 45.5 boundaries line should be easy to find. While Pakistan have a decent attack it can go around the park and this South Africa one certainly can so I like the over here.
Tips
Back Over 45.5 boundaries for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Bet365
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