Key events
3rd over: South Africa 6-0 (de Kock 4, Bavuma 2) A spectacular delivery from Boult beats de Kock on the inside, hits him on the thigh and deflects through to Latham. Boult instinctively goes up for caught behind, but his heart isn’t truly in it.
New Zealand have started well, and South Africa are playing cautiously as a result. Their best ODI innings are a crescendo, so the most important thing is to not lose early wickets.
2nd over: South Africa 4-0 (de Kock 3, Bavuma 1) Matt Henry had a bad day against Australia, when David Warner and Travis Head inflicted figures of 6.2-0-67-1 upon him.
He starts well here, beating Bavuma with a classic outswinger. An off-drive is well stopped at mid-off, which means New Zealand have already saved 10 runs in the field. Bavuma gets off the mark with a thick edge for a single and de Kock tucks another into the leg side.
1st over: South Africa 2-0 (de Kock 2, Bavuma 0) Trent Boult has a fine head-to-head record against Quinton de Kock, as do a few left-arm seamers. After three outswingers, he slips in a straight one that de Kock defends a little awkwardly. Boult smiles; when doesn’t he?
De Kock times the fifth ball through mid-off for a couple, with Conway doing well to save the boundary, and then forces a back cut that is spectacularly stopped by – yep – Glenn Phillips. Even by modern standards, he’s a truly great fielder.
Quinton de Kock and Temba Bavuma walk out to open the batting. This is Bavuma’s 71st white-ball game for South Africa – and his first against New Zealand.
South Africa in ODIs in 2023
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Batting first W9 L1
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Batting second W4 D4
Tom Latham’s decision to put them in is quite fascinating, especially given what happened to Jos Buttler and England a couple of weeks ago.
This is tremendous. My old table football nemesis Andrew Miller has written literally thousands of top-class pieces in the past 20-odd years. Thousands of pieces, tens of thousands of beautifully crafted words – and his place in history was earned by a single utterance in May 2022.
A very proud day, interviews on request etc (…but who wants to tell Baz the dictionary has misspelt his name in the citation…? 😲) https://t.co/7dYMik5kmA
— Andrew Miller (@miller_cricket) November 1, 2023
A bit of England news: David Willey will retire from international cricket after this World Cup. History, I suspect, will be kinder to his England career than most of us were during it.
Team news
One change apiece. The fit-again Tim Southee replaces the injured Lockie Ferguson for New Zealand; South Africa alter the balance of their attack by bringing in Kagiso Rabada for Tabraiz Shamsi.
New Zealand Conway, Young, Ravindra, Mitchell, Latham (c/wk), Phillips, Neesham, Santner, Henry, Southee, Boult.
South Africa de Kock (wk), Bavuma (c), van der Dussen, Markram, Klaasen, Miller, Jansen, Coetzee, Rabada, Maharaj, Ngidi.
New Zealand win the toss and … bowl
Crikey, another captain has put South Africa into bat. Tom Latham cites the possibility of dew later as the main reason. Interesting.
Preamble
The World Cup has taken a sudden turn for the better. When South Africa beat Pakistan and New Zealand lost to Australia at the weekend, it felt like confirmation of the most predictable group stage in history. But the manner of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s wins in the last couple of days has reopened the possibility of a late drama that would justify this never-ending league stage.
There are two ways of looking at today’s game between New Zealand and South Africa in the Pune. The first is that the winner is more likely to avoid India in the semi-finals; the second is that the loser, particularly if it’s New Zealand, will be left scrapping just to reach the semi-finals.
The permutations are too boring to detail here, which is to say I don’t fully understand them, but defeat for New Zealand would make their next game – Pakistan in Bengaluru on Saturday – a humdinger.
Even South Africa, formidable though they have been, are not completely safe. Their net run-rate means they could probably afford to lose the last three games and still make the semi-finals. But South Africa know better than anyone that, when it comes to World Cups, it’s safer not to trust the small print.
The smart money is still on a last four of India, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. But there’s a soupçon of a suggestion of a hint of a chance of a dramatic twist. Us unexpected neutrals would have taken that 48 hours ago.
The match starts at 8.30am GMT, 2pm in Pune.