After a destructive run chase in Centurion on Wednesday, South Africa have forced a decider in their T20 series with India and that final comes in Cape Town on Saturday when the honours will be decided once and for all.
India have already won the one day series on this tour and they would love to leave the country with the T20 spoils too. South Africa have been looking at next week and the upcoming Test series with Australia but that could be on the backburner here.
South Africa
I didn’t think South Africa were that far away in the opening match of the series, they just needed to pace their batting innings better and they did just that in Centurion and they flew home as a result. The beauty for the Proteas heading into this decider is that they will know they have even more in them with the bat too.
The concern will come in the form of restricting the Indians when it comes to having the ball in their hand. It might just be that they have to accept that they are going to concede runs given how strong the Indians are and just do their best to deliver a tight over or two that can restrict the score as much as they can.
India
After winning the first match of the series quickly after landing the ODI series in fine style, India will have been expecting to take an unassailable lead at Centurion and when they posted what looked at the time to be an above par total those thoughts may have been even stronger but then they ran into a train and are forced into a decider.
While injuries happen I think we have to recognise that India missed Jasprit Bumrah quite badly in that previous match. They didn’t manage to get control to begin with and they certainly had nothing left when it came to trying to restore some sort of panic at the end of the innings. The spinner was carted too which didn’t help.
Team News
South Africa could go into this match unchanged after such an excellent performance last time out. There is talk that Aaron Phangiso will come into the side to offer a second spin option but that remains to be seen.
India will hope that Jasprit Bumrah is fit to return here although that seems unlikely. If Kuldeep Yadav has recovered from injury he may well play but that aside India could be unchanged once again.
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Betting
I’m looking forward to this decider and for the first time in the series I can’t really call a winner with any degree of certainty. This literally could be the best team on the day will win and with that in mind I’ll leave the match betting alone and head to the side markets.
Matches at Newlands in this format of the game tend to be very high scoring and full of boundaries and I’m not expecting any different in that regard here I have to say. We’ve already seen a couple of boundary laden matches in this series and I expect the series to be rounded off with another. Both sides have depth to their batting and neither bowling attack is firing on all cylinders so it is over 36.5 boundaries for me here.
Tips
WON – Back Over 36.5 boundaries for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with William Hill
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