Skip to main content

Editor's Pick (ODI): India - South Africa

By
Team India created history as they clinched their first ever bilateral ODI series win on South African soil by beating Proteas by 73 runs in the fifth One-day International (ODI) at St George's Park on Tuesday. No Indian men's side since its first tour in South Africa back in 1992 has ever won a series across any format.

Now that we have won the series, I feel Captain Kohli would not mind playing around with the lineup for the match coming up tomorrow. Not take risks big enough to sacrifice the match but just enough to let the other boys get the feel of playing in South Africa. The very experience is terrific, I would say.

Winning the ODI series was not the only takeaway, We have ascended to the top spot in ICC ODI rankings. And we will stay there irrespective of how the final ODI match will go.

When we did create history, we did it in a fashionable way indeed. It was an emphatic 73-run win over South Africa in South Africa. Point to be noted that we have assumed the top spot for the fifth time. The fifth ODI saw a very clinical performance by the men in blue. We were made to bat first and we put 274 runs on the board. Rohit Sharma coming back with a bang in this match made all the difference. Contributing to almost half the final total, Rohit Sharma’s 115 from 126 deliveries helped not only India win but also earned him the man of the match award. A well deserved one for the timely knock. Ngidi took four wickets.


South Africa’s Hashim Amla also woke up and hit some runs finally. 71 runs. But his timely knock did not do what Rohit Sharma’s did. Kuldeep Yadav’s four wicket haul combined with two wickets each from Hardik Pandya and Y Chahal helped India make history. The South Africans collapsed to the wrist spinners yet again.

India's run of consecutive bilateral series wins
Against
Host
ODIs
Wins
Losses
NR
Captain
Zim
Zim
3
3
0
0
MS Dhoni
NZ
Ind
5
3
2
0
MS Dhoni
Eng
Ind
3
2
1
0
Virat Kohli
WI
WI
5
3
1
1
Virat Kohli
SL
SL
5
5
0
0
Virat Kohli
Aus
Ind
5
4
1
0
Virat Kohli
NZ
Ind
3
2
1
0
Virat Kohli
SL
Ind
3
2
1
0
Rohit Sharma
SA
SA
5*
4
1
0
Virat Kohli
The last and final match of the ODI series.

The match is being played at Centurion. With a highest score of 392, this ground has seen some massive knocks and fantastic cricket. India looks to be the favourites of this match. And why not. The team has been playing consistently well with all players having played an important role at some point or the other during the tournament.
While India might change the squad a bit, South Africa will want to play their best squad. Which unfortunately for them has not worked so far. It will be a special day as the South Africans play n honour of Nelson Mandela.

India Probable XI : Virat Kohli(c), Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Ajinkya Rahane, Shreyas Iyer / Manish Pandey, MS Dhoni, Hardik Pandya, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Bhuvneshwar Kumar/ Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah
South Africa Probable XI:  Hashim Amla, Aiden Markram (c), Jean-Paul Duminy, Tabraiz Shamsi / Imran Tahir, Andile Phehlukwayo, Kagiso Rabada, Lungisani Ngidi, Morne Morkel, AB de Villiers, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), David Miller

Key Players

Batsmen
Shikhar Dhawan
Virat Kohli
Rohit Sharma
Hashim Amla
David Miller
Heinrich Klaasen

Bowlers
Kuldeep Yadav
Y Chahal
Hardik Pandya
L Ngidi
K Rabada
Morne Morkel

Do listen to our audio podcast by Rahul to get more views.
Indu
P.S. Please note that the above-expressed opinions are purely the Editor’s. We do not take
responsibility, nor can we guarantee the performance of the players. All the best !!!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fan Data Analytics: Key to drive sports company growth

By Anonymous
Over the last several years, the buzz word in business and IT circles has been "big-data" and analytics. Many many articles and write-ups talk about them so I won't go into the details. You could get enough to last a lifetime with just the first few results of a Google search of these terms. But do you really know how it applies, specifically to a sports company? For long, sports franchises have been one of the biggest users of analytics. Before this was a buzz word, coaches and managers have relied up numbers and finding patterns in them to drive on-field performance. Indeed, the major leagues of the world have relied on performance analytics for everything from scouting for talent to calling the action on the field of play. But that never transcended to the off-field, more mundane but equally important task of managing the sports business. As more and more options come up vying for the fan's attention - live events, travel, other sports, TV, the Internet - the
3 comments
Read more

Club Vs Country

By Anonymous
With the IPL safely behind us, let us look at the Club Vs Country debate dispassionately.  We will focus on cricket, but learn generously from sports like football - which have been grappling with this issue for a lot longer.   There are 2 primary questions to answer – 1.  If a player has a conflict between a country game and a club game, what should he/she choose?  2.  If the player has to miss playing in order to rest the body (an increasingly important aspect of modern professional sports), should he/she choose to rest country games or club games?  Alas, it is not a easy choice to make because of a few key reasons – playing for the country is considered patriotic (equating players to soldiers in some instances) thus making players feel like they are traitors if they choose club over country.   On the other hand, players do make more money per game playing for a club – and it is hard to choose country over club and end up the poorer because of the choice.   Le
1 comment
Read more

IPL 2014 - Mumbai Indians team analysis

By Anonymous
The Mumbai Indians have always been the high-flying team of IPL.  They had the big buys in almost every year of IPL and kept a very high profile.  And over the last couple of years, they have started matching their performance with their profile – with wins in IPL 2013 and Champions League in 2011 and 2013.  Let us see how their team looks this year. Rohit Sharma, Mike Hussey, Ambati Rayudu and Apporv Wankhade are the pure play batsmen in the team. Corey Anderson, Keiron Pollard, Shreyas Gopal and Jalaj Saxena are the all rounders. CM Gautam, Ben Dunk, Sushant Marathe and Aditya Tare are the wicket keepers. Lasith Malinga, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Pragyan Ojha, Jasprit Bumrah, Josh Hazlewood, Marchant de Lange, Krishmar Santokie & Puwan Suyal are the bowlers.  The bowling looks pretty good with Malinga, Zaheer, Bajji and Ojha.   The batting is strong at the top – with Rohit Sharma and Mike Hussey, but looks weak beyond those two.   The power in the team comes from
2 comments
Read more