Drum beats welcome Team India at Port Elizabeth

Early Indian wickets will be key for South Africa as they attempt to stay alive in the series when the two sides contest the fifth ODI at St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth on Tuesday. The positives from the loss were that India looked to be in control for 90 per cent of the game and would think that they lost because of the inexperience of youngsters – Chahal, Kuldeep and Iyer. In the opening ODI which was staged in 1st February, 2018 India beat Proteas by six wickets. We needed wickets, because the wicket was such and the ground was wet, so by stopping runs we couldn’t have won.

Before the interruption, however, Dhawan and Kohli, two of best in-form visiting players in the series, dominated the home bowlers after India won the toss and opted to bat. South Africa chased down the total in 47 overs to win by six wickets. There are still question marks about the fitness of Kedar Jadhav, who suffered a hamstring injury in Cape Town and missed the previous game.

There is also a strong possibility of Kohli dropping opener Rohit Sharma, who has failed to get going in the series, scoring merely 40 runs in the four matches.

South Africa: 207/5 in 25.3 overs (Heinrich Klaasen 43 not out, David Miller 39; Kuldeep Yadav 2/51) vs India: 289/7 (Shikhar Dhawan 109, Virat Kohli 75, Mahendra Singh Dhoni 42 not out; Lungi Ngidi 2/52, Kagiso Rabada 2/58).

The two teams now travel to Port Elizabeth for the penultimate match on the eve of Valentines day. “He’s a cool, calm and experienced cricketer and he just said, ‘Anything in our slot we need to back and whatever we decide to do, we need to do fully.’ So we were very calculated in our approach there”. Following these fixtures against India, South Africa will take on Australia in a four-match Test series, with the first Test scheduled to begin in Durban on March 1. It’s hard to hit them down the ground if you don’t use your feet well. Rohit Sharma has had woeful returns so far in the series, and he’s due a big one. The Indian team led by Virat Kohli is eyeing glory, whereas the South African team is looking forward to salvaging a draw.

“He has a huge influence in the change room and we are proud to keep the unbeaten Pink ODI record intact”. Laura Wolvaardt and Mignon du Preez, who both struck half-centuries, played protagonists in South Africa’s first win in the three-match series, aided by a brisk 41-run cameo from captain Dane van Niekerk and India’s sloppiness in the end overs of their 240-run defence. “But it was all calculated and planned out, what we wanted to do”, he remarked.

Sridhar said that defeat in the last ODI was as much down to the exceptional circumstances created by the rain and the shortening of the game as anything else. When one of them go wrong in a particular, the result goes against them. “So we are still confident and we’ll surely come back in the next game with a good solid game-plan”. However, he hasn’t been able to replicate that form so far in this series.