The West Indies Tri-Series has moved from Guyana to St Kitts for the next three matches, the first of which comes up on Saturday when Australia and South Africa meet for the second time in the competition.
The series is nicely poised heading to St Kitts with all three sides having won a match each. South Africa’s win came over Australia in Guyana on Tuesday and I’m sure they will be keen to follow that up here.
South Africa
After feeling the full force of a brutal Kieron Pollard blitz in the tournament opener South Africa bounced back nicely to see off Australia and if they can beat them again they would be well on their way to making the final.
The really encouraging thing for South Africa is they won in Guyana in conditions which probably don’t suit them too well but they will relish what they find here in St Kitts and if the inner turmoil that there were signs of in that first game don’t rear up I’m expecting a strong performance from the Proteas.
Australia
Australia were far too good for the West Indies in their first game of the series but their batsmen struggled to deal with some high class bowling by South Africa on Tuesday and that is an area where they must improve going forward in this tournament.
I expect they will do that though. It is well known that their batsmen struggle against spin so to get away from the spin friendly conditions of Guyana to something more resembling normally in St Kitts will be a welcome move for Steve Smith’s men.
Team News
South Africa will be forced into a change with Rilee Rossouw out of the series with the shoulder damage he sustained in the previous match but Faf du Plessis has recovered from his finger injury so he looks like a perfect replacement. I doubt South Africa will be playing three spinners here so Morne Morkel could feature.
Australia are set to unleash Mitchell Starc on South Africa here after resting him for their first meeting on Tuesday. All eyes will be on Glenn Maxwell, a batsman who massively needs a score. George Bailey and Travis Head are waiting in the wings to step in if he continues to fail.
Warner Park
From the slow and low wickets in Guyana we move to a really good cricket wicket at Warner Park. There have been 14 ODIs on this ground in the past with South Africa having good memories here with a couple of wins and the sole defeat but Australia love it here having won all of their five matches.
There is plenty of pace in the wicket which assists the batsmen but the bowlers don’t mind that. One bowler did mind it though as this is the ground Herschelle Gibbs sit six sixes in an over in the 2007 World Cup. 10 of the 14 matches here have been won by the side batting first.
Betting
It is never easy to bet on a match when the ground is in use between two top quality nations for the first time in four years but I’ve seen enough cricket to know what to expect here. Just how quickly the two sides can adjust to the vastly different conditions remains to be seen and that is where the difficulty lies.
Later in the series on this ground I can see myself getting really stuck in but we had a good Guyana leg of the tour and I don’t want to risk throwing it all back straight away so it is just the two bets for me here in what should be a much more competitive game than the odds suggest.
Mitchell Starc is probably the best one day bowler in the world right now and his record of taking wickets is actually quite insane. In 11 of his last 14 ODIs he has taken two wickets or more and he has done it in a number of countries too so he isn’t a one trick pony by any stretch of the imagination.
Even if he was it wouldn’t matter because conditions here will really suit him. They will be much quicker and much bouncier and I’m expecting Starc to extract a lot from this pitch and at odds against with his wicket taking record backing him to take more than 1.5 wickets seems the obvious move.
For much of the same reason I’m going to back Kagiso Rabada to be the top South African bowler. This is slightly riskier in that even on a road Australia can’t play spin but Rabada took the most wickets against them on Tuesday on a pudding of a pitch so he could create some real havoc on a pitch like this.
Rabada has taken three or more wickets in five of his last eight ODIs with two wickets in one of the other three so he is prolific at this level and when Australia toured South Africa for three T20s earlier in the year he took two wickets in two of those games. On this pitch I’ll take him over the South African spinners.
Tips
WON – Back M.Starc Over 1.5 wickets for a 4/10 stake at 2.10 with Coral
Back it here:
Back K.Rabada Top South Africa Bowler for a 2/10 stake at 4.75 with Bet365
Back him here:
