Indian cricket team won the toss in the eventual quarter-final against South Africa and decided to bowl first, due to the series of chases which have been done in the tournament so far. Ravichandran Ashwin made his way back in the team replacing Umesh Yadav, due to the presence of hard-hitting left-handed batsmen in African side. He will have a crucial role to play despite the fact that the pitch is not expected to assist spinners.
AB de Villiers led South Africa too had one change as they decided to drop Wayne Parnell in favour of Andile Phehlukwayo, who was expected to be in the team right from the first game of the tournament.
Its an eventual quarter-final for both the teams and the winner will go on to face Bangladesh in the semi-final later this week. Though the rain is not expected to have a role in the game but in the case of a washout, it will be the Indian team that will be through the next round.
Playing XI –
South Africa (Playing XI): Quinton de Kock(w), Hashim Amla, Faf du Plessis, AB de Villiers(c), David Miller, Jean-Paul Duminy, Chris Morris, Andile Phehlukwayo, Kagiso Rabada, Morne Morkel, Imran Tahir
India (Playing XI): Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli(c), Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni(w), Hardik Pandya, Kedar Jadhav, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah
Captains talk –
De Villiers:
“The stats tell you that it is probably not a bad thing to bowl first, but I am pretty happy batting first. We have had success in this tournament here batting first against Sri Lanka. Pretty excited to get a good score on the board now. It’s about communication to know what is a good score. Maybe every 5 overs we need to communicate with our batters. He (Kohli) is a good man. We get along really well. We are both great competitors and we are both here to win the game for our country. Phehlukwayo, comes in for Parnell.”
Kohli:
“We are going to bowl. Teams have been chasing well. The wicket should stay the same throughout the game. We’ll know exactly what to do when we come out to bat. We have batted pretty well in both the games, not many teams have got 320 scores in this tournament. Just that we couldn’t defend it last game, maybe we were 15-20 short. When you bat second you know exactly what you need to do, so that stress for us is out of the way and we can just focus on restricting the opposition now. Ashwin comes in for Umesh. They have three left-handers, so bringing in an off-spinner could be a great thing for us.”