South Africa produced one of the most emphatic wins ever seen in the opening ODI of three against Bangladesh on Sunday and they will be looking to seal the series with a match to spare when the two sides meet in game two in Paarl on Wednesday.
Bangladesh go into the encounter knowing if they want to have a chance of winning the series they must win the game and force a decider but that won’t be easy against a strong looking South Africa outfit.
South Africa
If ODIs can be more dominant and emphatic than the one South Africa proceed in the first game then I fear for the side who would be on the wrong end of it because quite simply South Africa battered Bangladesh in the first game. If you wanted to be ridiculously critical for no reason you could question their late innings bowling but that would be petty.
The interesting thing going into this match will be how South Africa perform if Bangladesh can get some pressure on them. If we go back to the Champions Trophy a soft centre had appeared in the South African batting but to be fair they had so much left to come in the first ODI you’ve got to think they could have chased anything.
Bangladesh
I think what we got from Bangladesh was what most people would have expected in that they batted pretty well enough but were exposed with the ball. I say they batted well enough, they always looked light with their total but given what happened in the Test series it was not the worst effort in the world.
If they are going to get back into this series then they have to come up with a plan to get stuck into this South African batting line up. It could be that they need to employ spin earlier and put the Proteas batsmen off their rhythm but ultimately it is likely to come down to the fact that in these conditions they don’t have the required depth or quality.
Team News
Wayne Parnell has been ruled out of the series so he certainly won’t be playing in this match. After such a dominant performance it would not be a surprise to see South Africa unchanged to get the series won.
Bangladesh may feel they have to change something within their bowling attack with more options needed. Whether they have them remains to be seen. They are likely to have Tamim Iqbal back though barring any late repeat of his injury.
Boland Park
This will be the 11th ODI to be held in Paarl. South Africa have won three of their four contests at this ground while Bangladesh will be playing here for the first time which may be a further hindrance to their chances.
It is hard to judge the pitch based on previous matches because we’ve seen so few matches between two full nations but generally in South Africa pace and bounce is guaranteed. Given the lack of matches the ground gets I’m sure they will want to put on an entertaining spectacle so the wicket should be decent enough.
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Betting
Based on what we saw in the first match it would be a huge surprise if this ends up as anything other than a South Africa win but we’ve seen plenty of instances recently where backing short prices in a cricket match is the fast route to the poorhouse so I’ll go with one from the side markets here.
Hashim Amla is in brilliant form right now. Having bagged centuries in both Test matches he followed it up with another one in the first ODI and I’m not convinced he has stopped yet. He already has an ODI ton in Paarl and given how well he is hitting the ball the likelihood is that he will go beyond 37.5 runs in this match. I’ll take the over.
Tips
WON – Back H.Amla – Over 37.5 runs for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Paddy Power
Back him here:
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