India to face South Africa in third and final ODI of three-match series at Boland Park in Paarl
India will face South Africa in the third and final ODI of the three-match series at Boland Park in Paarl today. The match will start at 4.30 pm IST. India and South Africa have both won one match each in the series, and so the winner of the third ODI will seal the ODI series.
South Africa beat India by 8 wickets in the 2nd ODI played at St George’s Park in Gqeberha on Tuesday to level the series at 1-1. Earlier, India had defeated South Africa by eight wickets in the opening ODI in Johannesburg on 17th of this month. India has only managed to win an ODI series in South Africa once in 2018.
Quite how South Africa morphed into India, and India into South Africa, at St George’s Park on Tuesday – thus reversing the roles they played at the Wanderers on Sunday – can’t easily be known. It’s also a lazy way to look ahead to the deciding match of the men’s ODI series at Boland Park in Paarl on Thursday.
Who says a side who were dominant in one match can’t be dominated two days later? Who says their dominated opponents can’t turn dominators? We know from this year’s World Cup that one team can dominate for 10 consecutive games and then lose when it matters.
“Consistency is the only currency that matters” is among those glib bits of management-speak trotted out by those bent on achieving a dull drip of excellence. Consistency is why no-one likes Australia’s teams except other Australians – because they keep winning. It’s also why Australia’s rare failures are celebrated everywhere else.
“I have always been of the opinion that consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative,” Oscar Wilde wrote in an essay about James McNeill Whistler, the artist most famous for “Whistler’s Mother”, that was published in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885. Some 138 years later, Wilde’s words are no less true. Who wants to watch consistency do its dreary thing over and over and over again? Watching AI outstrip human ingenuity for five minutes might entertain us. For five hours? Not so much.
Cricket is not exempt from this dictum. Players, coaches and their teams’ more insecure, less curious supporters demand victory every time. Nothing could be more boring. Even losing every match would be more interesting.
Happily, sport doesn’t work like that. South Africa were rumbled for 116 on Sunday. India shambled to 211 all-out on Tuesday. Poor batting and fine bowling on decent surfaces were common to both matches. And here we are, keen to see what will unfold on Thursday.
Paarl’s pitch, like its predecessors in the rubber, should provide a fitting stage. The crowd will grace the occasion with verve. All that will be needed for the match to live up to its billing is for the players to do something worth watching; something we hadn’t thought would happen. Like Arshdeep Singh’s 5/37 at the Wanderers, or Tony de Zorzi’s unbeaten 119 at St George’s Park.
Let the moneyballers and analysts plot every twist and turn of a match before it happens. Let the unimaginative coddle themselves with their consistency coda. Let those who have eyes only for one team and its players refuse to look up from their obsession. Let the rest of us watch a game of cricket because we don’t know what might happen. Otherwise, what would be the point?
Squads:
India Squad: Ruturaj Gaikwad, Sai Sudharsan, Tilak Varma, KL Rahul(c), Sanju Samson(w), Rinku Singh, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Avesh Khan, Mukesh Kumar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Rajat Patidar, Washington Sundar, Akash Deep
South Africa Squad: Reeza Hendricks, Tony de Zorzi, Rassie van der Dussen, Aiden Markram(c), Heinrich Klaasen(w), David Miller, Wiaan Mulder, Keshav Maharaj, Nandre Burger, Lizaad Williams, Beuran Hendricks, Tabraiz Shamsi, Kyle Verreynne, Ottniel Baartman, Mihlali Mpongwana, Andile Phehlukwayo
