Saturday 7 April 2007

Preview; South Africa vs Bangladesh

Graeme Smith is giving Bangladesh the respect they deserve going into this game and rightly so given Bangladesh are due another upset soon. However, it is unlikely to be today, despite coach Dav Whatmore's ambition to further impress the Indian board. Habibual Bashar knows that more runs are needed from his top five, including himself. Exciting young opener Shariar Nafees, who has been desperately disappointing to date, was dropped for the last game and will continue to rest today as Javed Omar maintains his opening role. Omar offers a more solid, if slow, option and will be looking to build a platform for the more explosive players within the Bangladeshi ranks. Defeat for South Africa here would open the door for England in the race for semi-final qualification and Smith, who has been in awesome form so far, will not be willing to let that happen.

Prediciton: South Africa, though it will not be all one way traffic.

Players to watch: Graeme Smith and Mashrafe Mortaza.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yay! Bangladesh won!

Chrispy said...

I thought they were going to be beat someone soon, but I was banking on England and the Windies! Good on them, it throws it wide open again, thankfully!