South Africa drew first blood in their T20 series against New Zealand with a pretty comfortable victory in the opening match of two on Friday night and they will be looking for more of the same when the two sides reconvene for the second game in Centurion on Sunday afternoon.
South Africa can seal an emphatic series win should they prevail in this match and that will give them some confidence to take into the ODIs with them. Faf du Plessis missed the first match of the series but all the talk is he will return for this match which will see AB de Villiers move up to open the batting and set up all kinds of carnage.
New Zealand rested a number of senior players for this series and it showed in the first match when only Martin Guptill and Kane Williamson offered much with the bat. The Kiwis weren’t a whole lot better with the ball and the batting that South Africa still had in the hutch in that first game suggests there could be even more to come from them.
I’ve seen New Zealand banded about as a value bet for this match but I’m confident South Africa still have a bit in hand so I’m going to leave the match alone as I’m not a short price backer in this format.
One bet I like the look of though is for there to be more than 36.5 boundaries. Even though New Zealand never really batted all that well in Durban both sides still scored 20 boundaries each and the ball flies further at Centurion so I’m expecting to see more hits get to the boundaries here.
We know New Zealand’s gameplan is to be aggressive whoever it is representing them and South Africa are a lot more attacking themselves these days. I fancy a much higher scoring game here which in turn should see a number of boundaries.
Back Over 36.5 boundaries for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with William Hill
Blog cricket YTD: -1.31pts
