The unanswered question about South Africa is what happens if the top order fails.<\/p>\n
Jansen appears a place too high at number seven. Will they feel free to go hard in a knockout game?<\/p>\n
The Proteas are also unique among the semi-finalists in that they do not have a wrist spinner in their XI, instead leaving their spin duties to left-arm finger spinner Keshav Maharaj and part-time off-spinner Markram.<\/p>\n
It has meant the Proteas have bowled the fewest amount of spin overs in the tournament \u2013 just 22.8%.<\/p>\n
In contrast, 53% of England’s overs have been from spinners.<\/p>\n
“You can only pretty much cut your coat according to your cloth size and we don’t have wrist spinners or mystery spinners,” Conrad said.<\/p>\n
“Our bowling attack was fashioned in such a way that we’ve got wicket-taking options and that’s something that we’ve driven, especially with guys like KG [Rabada] and Marco [Jansen] – their impact in the match will be through taking wickets.”<\/p>\n
South Africa’s gaps have been filled by Ngidi, who Conrad calls a “mystery seamer”, and seamer Corbin Bosch.<\/p>\n
Ngidi is known for his range of slower balls. <\/p>\n
He has only conceded 6.2 runs per over in the middle phase of the innings while the unheralded Bosch has taken six wickets in that period.<\/p>\n
“They’re all Test-match bowlers so bowling a Test-match length doesn’t come difficult to them so and I think that’s still a really tough length to hit consistently.<\/p>\n
“Bosch keeps it really, really simple, he trains smartly, he trains hard, he doesn’t give himself too many options.<\/p>\n
“We have Lungi that’s got a really deceptive slower ball and then Marco and KG are Marco and KG.<\/p>\n
“It’s nice to be able to have that sort of variety.”<\/p>\n
In 2024, India became the first team to win the T20 World Cup unbeaten. If South Africa are to win it, they will now have to do the same.<\/p>\n
“The South Africa side look ready,” said former England captain Michael Vaughan.<\/p>\n
“I do think that World Test Championship final victory at Lord’s has given them that boost.<\/p>\n
“India played the pure game to the [50-over World Cup] final in 2023 and had one blip in the final [against Australia]. That is the one fear I have for South Africa.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The unanswered question about South Africa is what happens if the top order fails. Jansen appears a place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-455636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}