New Delhi: For India, the ODI series has been the Virat Kohli show so far but South Africa have shown that it will take more than that to defeat them.
Part of that confidence will be stemming from their superb show in the Test series, where they blanked India. But the depth of their batting line-up and the great batting tracks seen in the first two matches have meant that every total has seemed chaseable.
That aside, the competitiveness of both teams has given the series a serious edge and from India’s perspective, a “desperation” too.
“It’s a very different personnel of players but the guys are very aware of the responsibility of what they’re representing,” India assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate said on Friday on the eve of the series-deciding third ODI.
KL Rahul’s side won the first match at Ranchi by 17 runs but SA pulled one back at Raipur with a four-wicket victory.
“We always want to win but, yeah certainly, when a few losses do start stacking up and performances have been below what we expect from ourselves, I think it’s a slight desperation from the series point of view,” he added.
Then again, India would have wanted nothing less from a series against South Africa. The hosts hold themselves to a high standard and pressure has become second nature to most of them.
“I don’t think pressure ever goes away for this team,” said ten Doeschate. “You know, bilateral series, when the series is on the line, there is an element of pressure there in itself. We try to focus on the process. We try and assess what’s going to be a good score and then the batting unit has to go about getting it.”
And then, there is the element of luck with dew proving to be such a big factor in the series so far. India will hope KL Rahul calls correctly at the toss or they could be in for another nervy second innings.
Dew played a massive role in the first two games and the India team knows it could be a factor in Visakhapatnam too.
“The dew factor is so big here. It’s obviously not our fault but it is our responsibility to find a way to get around that. I think we’re doing pretty well in the defending department now (if India is bowling second),” ten Doeschate explained.
“And obviously we have assessed this is a high scoring ground with fairly small boundaries. But the biggest challenge again is going to be sorting out the disparity between batting first and batting second, and that is the biggest challenge for us,” he added.
Ten Doeschate said the Indian team as a batting group did try to tailor in the need of extra runs in these conditions, and trained accordingly at nets.
“We actually tried to factor it into our batting. You know in the start of the first game we thought 320 was sort of high and then we put a frame on that 350, even given the ball coming it was a good effort to get that score.
“You always want more runs and again the conversations have been around how can we maximise it, even then sometimes the conditions make it tough but again the responsibility is to find ways in tough conditions,” he said.
Team news
South Africa have some injury concerns to take care of with pacer Nandre Burger and batter Tony de Zorzi limping off the field at Raipur. But such has been the depth of their bench, that nothing seems to faze them.
India, on the other hand, will need to figure if they want to continue with Washington Sundar in the line-up. They have the option of drafting in another specialist batter like Tilak Varma and given the high-scoring nature of the series, that might prove to be the right call.
Still, South Africa would like nothing more than to inflict another series loss on India. It will be their second ODI series defeat after 2022-23 when the Aussies won 2-1.
If that does happen, it will be the Proteas’ first-ever ODI series victory on Indian shores.
