Can the hosts tie up the series?
Riding on Tilak Varma’s explosive century, India managed to take the lead in the four match T20I series and head into the final T20I with the momentum and a shot at wrapping up the series.
Ahead of the fourth and final T20I, here’s our match preview and predictions.
South Africa vs India 4th T20I | India tour of South Africa 2024 | 20:30 IST, November 15
While India might have two scores of 200+ in this series, the batting hasn’t clicked as a unit barring one or two individual performances, the bigger and more experienced names have not clicked yet. Such was the case in the third T20I as well as it was Tilak Varma and Abhishek Sharma’s 107-run partnership which was the only highlight of what was another wise sloppy batting performance. Sanju Samson fell for a duck once again while Suryakumar Yadav failed to get going as well. Hardik Pandya once again struggled, striking just above 100 and it took some late heroics from Ramandeep Singh to get India over 200. With the ball, while the spinners, who were the heroes in the opening two games, leaked runs and it was Arshdeep Singh’s death overs calmness which saw India get over the line.
For the hosts, they failed to capitalise on the early wicket of Sanju Samson, and not only did they leak runs, giving away 19 extras is something they will have on their mind, which eventually came to bite them at the end. With the bat, the Proteas went hard from ball one but while all of the top seven batters got starts, they failed to capitalise on it and it was Heinrich Klaasen and late heroics from Marco Jansen, who threatened to take the game away from India. Jansen almost succeeded but he fell inches short as India stole a narrow win.
Moving from one high-scoring ground to another, at the Wanderers in Johannesburg, both teams will want their batters to finally click as a unit as the visitors will be looking to seal the series. Expect a lot of runs once again and it will be the Men in Blue holding the advantage.
Fantasy XI: Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Aiden Markram, David Miller, Tristan Stubbs, Suryakumar Yadav, Heinrich Klaasen, Hardik Pandya, Varun Chakravarthy, Marco Jansen, Gerald Coetzee
Venue: Johannesburg
Winners Prediction: India
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