England embark on what could yet be a busy winter of cricket on Friday when they meet South Africa in the first of three T20 matches in Cape Town, as both sides continue their preparations for the delayed World T20 next year.
This is a three match series and there are ODIs to follow it so there should be plenty of competitiveness about this opening where the winners will go one up with just two matches left in the series.
South Africa
This is the first taste of bio-secure bubbles and behind closed doors cricket for the South Africa team although some of their players will have negated that inactivity by competing in the Indian Premier League. Since South Africa were last out they have had time for their rushed in coaching staff to take stock of where they are and attempt to put a strategy together moving forward, albeit the wrangling’s and politics going on behind the scenes might not have helped much in that quest.
South Africa have shown when they were last in action that they can score runs but the big issue they have in this series is whether they can restrict this powerful England batting juggernaut. They were unable to when these two sides met earlier in the year but since then a couple of bowlers have really impressed at the Indian Premier League and will be full of confidence as a result. It remains to be seen whether hitting England with a pace barrage is the way to go.
England
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic England were able to remain fairly active throughout the year and one of the biggest things for them from the way their summer was structured was that they were forced to play fringe players in certain matches and as a result they have plenty of competition for places. In the main they have brought their strongest squad on tour here so whichever combination England plump for will be strong.
It might be that England have created a scenario where there are too many cooks and that is something that they will need to overcome. If you look at their warm up matches where two teams from their squad met each other the quality on both sides was very strong. If they can come up with the right bowling combination you would fancy their chances here because the rest should take care of itself given what they have with the bat.
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Team News
Both Kagiso Rabada and Amrich Nortje are expected to be involved for South Africa here while Temba Bavuma is most likely to be the partner for Quinton de Kock in the opening spot. They need to choose between Lungi Ndidi or Lutho Sipamla for the final bowling spot.
The make up of the England batting line up will be the attention in their team selection. It appears Jos Buttler will continue to open and he’ll do so alongside Jason Roy with Jonny Bairstow dropping into the middle order. Ben Stokes will return having missed much of the English summer.
Betting
I’m expecting a pretty high scoring series between these two sides. That is exactly what we got when England were in this part of the world at the beginning of the year and I’ve seen nothing that suggests we won’t get the same here. Back in February four of the six innings saw the scores soar over 200 and if South Africa can continue batting in that vein then we should see the scores continue to flow over the course of these three matches.
That makes me think that the 37.5 boundaries line is a little on the low side here. Batsmen these days are all about finding or clearing the ropes and if you viewed the England cricket Twitter feed in recent days you’ll see their players have all been doing that. There are some clean hitters of a cricket ball in this South Africa team too so the boundaries should flow. Two of the last three first innings scores here at Newlands have been more than 190 so this isn’t a low scoring ground. I like the over here.
Tips
WON – Back Over 37.5 boundaries for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with William Hill
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