As India and South Africa are all set to play to lock horns for the 3-match ODI series, let’s look at some relevant numbers.
Virat Kohli not as captain?:
Tomorrow as the Indian team takes the field under the leadership of KL Rahul, it will be quite odd to see Virat Kohli walking out in the field without the captaincy duties. The last time he played an international game, was in an ODI game against New Zealand at Vishakhapatnam on October 29, 2016. Since then he played 179 games (51 Tests, 78 ODIs, and 50 T20Is) for India and he captained each of them.
Captain KL Rahul:
As KL Rahul will walk out for the toss, he will become the 26th player to lead India in ODI cricket. It’s the second consecutive ODI series in which India will get a new captain. Last year when India travelled to Sri Lanka, Shikhar Dhawan was given captaincy duties as all test members were in England for 5-match series.
Head-to-head:
So far India and South Africa faced each other in 84 ODIs. The Proteas lead the head-to-head record with 46 wins while India won 35 games, three other games ended in a no result. At home, South Africa leads the head-to-head battle comprehensively with a 22-10 margin. However, this will be the first clash between the two sides at Boland Park, Paarl.
India previously played 3 games at this ground. While they beat Kenya and Netherlands but the game ended in a tie against Zimbabwe in 1997. South Africa played 7 ODIs here and they won 6 of them as their only loss was against New Zealand when the visitors beat them by 1 wicket in a low-scoring thriller in 2013.
India eyes Consecutive Series win:
Unlike in Test matches, India had already broken the jinx of the ODI series win in the rainbow nation in the last tour as they beat the Proteas by 5-1 in the 6-match series. It’s the only series win for India in 5 attempts as the hosts got the better of India on all other 4 occasions.
India also played two triangular series in South Africa and on both occasions they lost the final against the home side.
100 ODI wickets for Chahal?
Yuzvendra Chahal needs another 3 wickets to reach the milestone of 100 wickets. If he reaches the milestone in tomorrow’s match, he will be the quickest Indian spinner to reach it. Kuldeep Yadav completed 100 ODI wickets in 58 games. Currently, Chahal picked 97 wickets in 56 ODIs with an economy of 5.20 which included 2 fifers.
In the last South Africa tour, he had a phenomenal success along with Kuldeep Yadav as he picked 16 wickets in 6 games with one fifer.
