New Zealand v South Africa, 3rd ODI, Preview: South Africa’s batting arsenal under spotlight

Jan 6, 2019 at 3:51 AM

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New Zealand v South Africa, 3rd ODI, Preview: South Africa’s batting arsenal under spotlight

South Africa was left dejected as their unbeaten 12 game streak was brought to a halt in the second ODI at Christchurch. The Proteas lower order looked determined but Trent Boult remained calm and averted any turnaround from the tourists.

The loss after more than four months. The Hagley Oval thriller ensured that both the teams drew level in after two matches setting a perfect tone for the remaining three matches. The upcoming game at Hamilton will be a contest between two sides who have looked equally competent with each other so far in the series. The games have gone down the wire on both the occasions with the only beneficiaries being the fans who have been treated with quality limited overs cricket.

Team Composition:

New Zealand has to now find a solution to Tom Latham’s poor form. It’s been quite some time since he made a valuable knock at the top. His continued failures have left a big hole in the Kiwi batting line up. The left-hander should be really worried about the fact that once Martin Guptill comes back from his injury, he might find it really difficult to keep up his place in the squad. Neil Broom in the middle order is another weak spot who is yet to come up with a good performance with the bat.

The rest of the batting unit, however, is in good nick. Taylor became New Zealand’s leading ODI century-maker with his 17th hundred in Christchurch and also completed registering centuries against all Full Member teams. He also became the fourth and quickest New Zealander to score 6000 ODI runs. Kane Williamson and Kimmy Neesham have also been outstanding.

South Africa saw a poor performance from the top order in the previous game. AB de Villiers was pretty vocal in pointing that issue and would expect better performance from Hashim Amla, JP Duminy and David Miller. He himself would push for a good knock. The bowling attack seems perfectly fine although Pretorius and Phelukwayo went wicketless last game.

Probable XI:

New Zealand: Dean Brownlie, Tom Latham, Kane Williamson (C), Ross Taylor, Neil Broom, James Neesham, Luke Ronchi (wk), Mitchell Santner, Ish Sodhi, Tim Southee, Trent Boult

South Africa: Hashim Amla, Quinton de Kock (wk), Faf du Plessis, AB de Villiers (C), JP Duminy, Dwaine Pretorius, Chris Morris, Wayne Parnell, Andile Phelukwayo, Kagiso Rabada, Imran Tahir

Stats:

  • AB de Villiers has scored 8,995 runs and needs 5 more to become the second South African player to reach the 9,000 runs milestone.
  • Hashim Amla has scored 6,825 runs and needs 175 more to become the fourth South African player to reach the 7,000 runs milestone.

Match Details:

Match begins at 2:00 PM (local time)

Who said What?:

“I think he’s always talked about as one of the greats. His record suggests he should be seen in that light. We are all delighted Ross has the record he deserves,” Mike Hesson.

We bat to 10 but the top five and top six still have to take the responsibility to be there at the end and two of us got in – Quinton and myself – and not one of us took it through,” AB de Villiers

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