Pakistan hope to make a late charge vs South Africa who have already booked a place in the semifinals of the World Cup.
South Africa has already secured a place in the semi-finals. Even though they haven’t won a game in the tournament yet, Pakistan still has a remote possibility of making it to the knockout stages if they win their next two games by significant margins and other outcomes work out. Every match has a lot on the line because no teams have been eliminated from contention yet (at least not until Monday’s Bangladesh vs. Sri Lanka match concludes). The pointy end of this tournament has now arrived.
Perhaps their most recent performance will continue to inspire Pakistan’s bowlers. After limiting one of the tournament’s top batting teams to a low score that Pakistan appeared likely to chase, Fatima Sana and company struck early and then often against England until a second round of showers ended the match. The rains that have prevailed in Colombo will probably envenom seamers, who might cause the ball to move noticeably off a somewhat damp pitch, as was the case in that game.
In Saturday’s encounter against New Zealand, after being 92 for 5 in an already rain-shortened innings, Pakistan’s hitters were hit by some excellent seam bowling before the match was called off by additional rain. In their XI, South Africa has seasoned seamers like Marizanne Kapp and Masabata Klaas. Both bowlers have the ability to bowl themselves into greater rhythm on a beneficial surface, even though they haven’t exactly blown the world away thus far.
However, Pakistan would believe they can compete more if the surface is harder to bat on. A low-scoring game would be ideal for them because batting is by far their weakest of their two primary disciplines. Actually, the last time Pakistan defeated South Africa was at Lahore, just a month earlier, and it had been a low-scoring match.
As Sri Lanka discovered on Friday, South Africa’s batting is led by one of the best opening combinations in the world and is appearing to be getting better. They seem to have moved past the humiliation of losing their tournament opener to 69 runs comfortably.