India vs South Africa 2nd ODI Preview

The two teams face off again. On another belter at Gwalior. I reckon I need to find the origins of the word belter as soon as I churn out this post.

Both teams have already arrived, and the game begins in about 200 minutes from now. Gwalior has been a great hunting ground for the Indians. That is the end of cricketing clichés in this post. India have won 7 out of 9 games they have played here at the Captain Roop Singh Stadium.

We have gone at length about the three reasons why South Africa lost the First ODI at Jaipur. I reiterate:

1. The bails did not fall
2. Sachin saved a controversial boundary
3. SA’s security fears

All the three things are inherent independent random incidents and mentalities and nothing can be done by the visitors to change any of that. Of course they can hope that if a ball hits the stumps at 135k, the bails should have the courtesy to pop out by themselves.

So what can be changed to bring about a victory?

Hashim Amla?

He is anyways in for this game, and its more of a psychological thing with him being around, something like an infallible hero who is only produced when there has been a loss. Like they were not expecting the loss in the first place. Maybe.

Here is hoping South Africa have some luck on their side, and lose to India anyways.

Talking about India, they seem to be a jolly alright bunch of International Cricketers. They knew they would win, and win they did, so what if they had to break sweat along the way. This is their neighborhood, they know these flat tracks well. Another 300ish score awaits them unless they have their regular maintenance collapse. That would be unlucky.

Team News:

India (probable) 1 Virender Sehwag, 2 Sachin Tendulkar, 3 Virat Kohli, 4 MS Dhoni (capt & wk), 5 Suresh Raina, 6 Dinesh Karthik, 7 Yusuf Pathan, 8 Ravindra Jadeja, 9 Praveen Kumar, 10 Ashish Nehra, 11 Sreesanth/Sudeep Tyagi

South Africa: (probable) 1 Herschelle Gibbs, 2 Loots Bosman/Hashim Amla, 3 Jacques Kallis (capt), 4 AB de Villiers, 5 Alviro Petersen, 6 Mark Boucher (wk), 7 Albie Morkel, 8 Wayne Parnell, 9 Dale Steyn, 10 Johan Botha, 11 Charl Langeveldt.

now do not tell me you saw that before…that is so totally not copied from cricinfo to the last spacebar

have fun folks. the runfest awaits