The knockout cricket at the T20 World Cup doesn’t officially begin until Wednesday night but it has come early for West Indies and South Africa when they meet to close out the Super Eights Group 2 in Antigua on Sunday night.
After England won emphatically earlier in the day the equation for these two sides is simple. Win and you’re in the semi-final. Lose and you are going home so we have an effective quarter final on our hands in a potentially pulsating night of cricket.
West Indies
West Indies looked like they had put themselves in a real hole in the opening stages of this Super Eight stage when they came apart at the end of both innings against England in their first game in it but they did enough of a job on USA in the second one to get themselves back on track and now they have a winner takes all showdown for a spot in the last four of their home tournament as they seek about becoming the winners of this tournament for a third time.
We saw the complete performance from West Indies in the last match and that has to give them a lot of confidence ahead of this game. Their bowlers never let the USA batters get into the game and then their batters just came out and played with the freedom that we would expect of them and if they can repeat that over the course of this match then they are going to be a tough nut to crack here in conditions which should suit them.
South Africa
When you consider that South Africa have won all four of their matches in the initial group of this competition and both games that they have played in the Super Eights, they could be forgiven for thinking that they should already be in the semi-final but the problem with their two victories at this stage is that they were not emphatic enough to guarantee their progress and now they find themselves in the position where six wins from six will count for nothing if a seventh doesn’t follow here.
If they are going to win this match then they are going to have to hold their nerve with the bat. We have seen that batting struggle with the pressure too many times in the past. This team claims they are different to those ones and suddenly they have a huge chance to show that is the case. Their bowling will deliver the goods, as much as you can deliver against this powerful West Indies batting, but if the batting collapses again they won’t have any chance.
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Team News
You would imagine West Indies will go in with the same side as they had in that emphatic win over USA last time out. The only change would be Romario Shepherd coming in to lengthen the batting in place of Obed McCoy.
South Africa are probably going to be unchanged too having yet to lose a match in this tournament but Tabraiz Shamsi was expensive in the last game so he is vulnerable. You need mystery spin against West Indies though.
Betting
What a game of cricket we are in for here! We have arguably the two biggest hitting teams in world cricket battling it out on a decent pitch and a small ground in a knockout game so we should be in for a cracker here. I don’t think either team will want to leave this one on their bowling attack. The batters have to go out and put a score up which takes a freak over or a cameo here or there and I expect that to be the case.
These two sides played three warm up matches against each other which were all high scoring and that was with South Africa missing a number of their big batters. West Indies were without Andre Russell with the ball in that series but the rest of the attack played and while South Africa will bring Anrich Nortje and Kagiso Rabada in from that series, all the West Indies batters will have faced those two in the Indian Premier League. There is no secrets here so I expect the big hits to flow in this one.
Tips
Back Over 17.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Bet365
