The South African summer ends on Friday when the home side host Pakistan in the fourth and final T20 match of what has been a brilliant series to watch to date. Just like on Wednesday, this last game is at Centurion.
Pakistan produced a brilliant run chase in the third game on Wednesday to lead the series 2-1 so the worst they can do is draw the series. South Africa have to win this final game to be able to achieve that. There is also a World T20 on the horizon so there is a lot at stake here.
South Africa
It isn’t very often that you make 200 in a T20 game and are a) disappointed to only make 200 and b) never really look like winning the game. That is the situation that South Africa found themselves in throughout that third game of the series though. I mentioned in a couple of the earlier matches that if South Africa are going to win them then their best chance is to chase a score down and we saw why in emphatic style on Wednesday.
Pakistan should have been chasing 20 or so more than they were but this particular South Africa attack on these kind of pitches just doesn’t have the skills to dent this Pakistan batting line up. Pakistan won with so much to spare that you get the impression if the Proteas are going to come out of the series level then they have to win the toss here and put Pakistan in. It isn’t a sure fire route to success but it will help.
Pakistan
I don’t think Pakistan will be at all happy with how they bowled in that third match. We’ll cut them a little bit of slack because the wicket was so good to bat on but there were a lot of hit me balls sent down and that will have disappointed the bowling unit and the captain. They did come back into things at the end of the innings though and kept South Africa 20 runs short of where they should have got to and that made a difference in the end.
I mentioned in the Wednesday preview that Babar Azam would be much more suited to these Centurion conditions than the Johannesburg ones and he certainly proved me right with one of the best T20 100s you could ever wish to see. The good thing for Pakistan is they won with so much batting still in the shed so you get the feeling that if they bat first they could put up an enormous score which is not able to be chased down, so they are in a great position to win the series.
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Team News
It appears that Kyle Verreynne isn’t going to be used in this series although to be fair to the South African batting they are going along fine. The hosts will have to make a change to the bowling after that last game. Lutho Sipamla is waiting to come in.
There is no need for Pakistan to make any changes to a side who have just obliterated their opposition but they won’t have been happy with the bowling either. Usman Qadir could well come in and at least give another spin option even if he doesn’t bowl all four overs.
Betting
We’ve seen two high scoring matches in this series and I fully expect to see a third here but rather than take the run line, which may well be covered even into the 340s, I’m happy to take the over 43.5 boundaries for this one. There were more than 50 boundaries hit in the previous game here and while there might be a slowing down in hitting them, I don’t expect it to be by 10 which would be needed for the over to fail here.
This is a small ground. It has a lightning fast outfield and the batting pitch is so good for the batsmen with the ball coming onto the bat and the bounce not being too high like it is in Johannesburg. Pakistan have tucked in with the bat in both the ODIs here and the T20 match and South Africa don’t look like they are going to slow down now. The 43.5 line looks high but when you consider there were 54 here on Wednesday it might not be high enough. I’m happy to be on the over here.
Tips
Back Over 43.5 boundaries for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with William Hill
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