India vs South Africa, 2nd ODI: Fantasy Preview

In the first match of the series on Sunday (March 7), South Africa secured a convincing eight-wicket win. It was their seventh successive victory in ODIs and they’ve won every match that they have played in the format since the start of 2020. On the other hand, you could possibly say that lack of match practice might have affected the Indian team – after all, it was their first international match in a year’s time.

India have the upper hand when it comes to past fixtures between the two teams, having won 14 matches and lost eight against South Africa in ODIs.

ODI HEAD-TO-HEAD 

Overall: Matches – 23 | India – 14 Wins | South Africa – 8 Wins | No Result – 1

Last 5 Matches: India – 3 Wins | South Africa – 2 Wins 

SUGGESTED TEAMS

While you could go for the above team, you also have the option of choosing your own team from Cricket.com’s Fantasy Research Centre. Based on algorithms we come up with six different teams that could fetch crucial points.

GROUND DETAILS & TEAM COMBINATION

All games in this tour will be played at the Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Cricket Stadium in Lucknow. In the first match, the batting scorecards of both teams were completely contrasting. While India’s batters struggled, South Africa chased down a target of 178 with ease. As mentioned earlier, having not played international cricket for such a long time might have affected India’s performance. We could possibly see a closer contest this time around.

We’ve gone with five batters (including one wicketkeeper), three all-rounders and three bowlers in our team. We couldn’t select Smriti Mandhana due to budget constraints. Needless to say, not having a batter of her calibre is a massive risk.

There could be a few interesting match-ups too.

Harmanpreet Kaur and Marizanne Kapp are two key members of their respective teams and it is the latter who has often had the better of this contest. In ODIs, Kapp has dismissed Harmanpreet four times in eight innings (27 runs at an average of 6.7).

Lizelle Lee remained unbeaten during the Proteas’ successful run-chase on Sunday and the Indian team will be hopeful that Jhulan Goswami will find more success against the South Africa opener this time around. So far, they have faced each other in seven innings in ODIs, with Lee scoring 46 runs and Goswami getting her wicket twice.

CAPTAIN SUGGESTION

We decided to select Marizanne Kapp as our captain because of her all-round abilities. While she did not get a chance to bat in the first ODI, she has scored 323 runs at an average of 64.6 since 2019 in 50-over international cricket. As a bowler, we all know how good she has been over the years – in the aforementioned time period, Kapp has taken 21 wickets at 21.8 in ODIs.

Our Criclytics player projector predicts Kapp could score 10-35 runs and could take 0-1 wickets in this match.

X-FACTORS

While India’s batters didn’t have the greatest of time in the first ODI, Mithali Raj still managed to score a half-century. It’s almost 22 years since she played her first ODI and she continues to be one of the best batters in world cricket. In each of the last eight calendar years that she has played ODIs, she has averaged 40+ which speaks volumes about her incredible consistency.

Our Criclytics player projector predicts Raj could score 17-42 runs in this match.

Since making her ODI debut in 2016, Laura Wolvaardt has been excellent for South Africa. She has scored 2076 runs at an average of 46.1 in ODIs which is a superb record. In fact, since her debut, only three batters (Tammy Beaumont, Lizelle Lee, and Amy Satterthwaite) have made more runs in women’s ODIs. On Sunday, she played a massive role in South Africa’s victory, scoring 80.

Our Criclytics player projector predicts Wolvaardt could score 20-53 runs in this match.

Deepti Sharma has been one of India’s key players in recent years. In ODIs, she has a batting average of 38 and a bowling average of 27.6 which are elite stats for any all-rounder. In Sunday’s game, while she did not take a wicket, she scored 27 with the bat.

Our Criclytics player projector predicts Deepti could score 13-38 runs and could take 0-1 wickets in this match.