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Proteas squad members celebrate after a wicket.
The captain of South Africa’s national cricket team Temba Bavuma is confident that the Proteas will advance to the play-off stage of the ICC’s Champions Trophy tournament in Pakistan.
The Proteas take on Australia in their second match of the tournament at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium on Tuesday.
Australia made a winning start to their campaign in Group B, with a five-wicket win over England in Lahore on Saturday.
Josh Inglis and Alex Carey shared in a match-winning 146-run fifth-wicket partnership with Inglis scoring a century and Carey a half-century.
England seamer Jofra Archer dropped a simple catch on the boundary at deep mid-wicket to gift Carey his half-century. He also bowled a no-ball in the penultimate over which gave Glen Maxwell a second life, two fumbles which could have changed the complexion of the game.
Proteas’ quick Kagiso Rabada praised the Australian batsmen and the pitches in Pakistan, but he too is quietly confident about South Africa’s prospects.
“Australia didn’t hit too many sixes. They hit a lot of fours which tells you how good the pitches are and how quick the outfields you are going to have. To have your wits about you, especially defending what you think might be a good score however you know if Archer took that catch perhaps we are talking about a different result right now but it was still impressive does that put us on edge or whatever no it doesn’t again it’s just another game that we are going to try and attack and look to play the perfect game,” explains Rabada.
The South Africans had their first look at the pitch at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium in their training session on Sunday and Bavuma expects the dew to play a role in the latter stages of the match.
This venue hosted its first match on Monday when New Zealand took on Bangladesh.
“Rawalpindi wicket we just had a stroll past it now. It looks like a good wicket we had training yesterday there was quite a considerable amount of dew compared to the other venues, so we expect that to play a part yeah, we expect a good wicket think there’s another game there another game with a lot of runs,” Bavuma explains.
Having lost to Australia in the semi-finals of the 2023 World Cup in India, the Proteas will no doubt want to settle the score with the Aussies and the skipper is optimistic that they will reach the play-offs.
“Yeah, we are quite bullish about our chances as much as the tri-series we didn’t have all our guys it still was an opportunity for us to get whatever intel we could about the conditions and share that with the guys that came in fortunately the guys that came in have come on the back of some good cricket back home confidence is good and we are quite optimistic about our chances in the competition,” says Bavuma.
It’s expected to be cloudy with a couple of showers in Rawalpindi on Tuesday and weather permitting, the match gets underway at 11 am South African time.
