India have made an impressive start to their T20 World Cup 202 journey with back-to-back victories. The contest against Pakistan was an edge-of-the-seat affair but against Netherlands, the former champions were quite clinical across departments.
A stiff challenge awaits them with a charged-up South Africa their next opponents who stormed to a 104-run win over Bangladesh after their opener was washed out due to rain. Their pacers were in red-hot form especially Anrich Nortje who ran through Bangladesh batters with a four-wicket haul in Sydney.
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The legendary Lance Klusener reckons how Indian batters negotiate the pace threat of South Africa will decide the outcome of the contest to be played on Sunday in Perth.
“It is about to change the balance of the team a bit with Dwaine (Pretorius) being injured…the game there for me will be how well the Indian batsmen can handle the pace of South Africa," Klusener was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
Klusener reckons South Africa might go with an extra pacer against India. “We might see another pacer in Perth. I was really impressed with the way (Tabraiz) Shamsi bowled the other night. He is a wicket-taker," he said.
The ongoing world cup in Australia has seen a series of dramatic results with the likes of Namibia, Scotland, Ireland and Zimbabwe punching above their weight to humble world’s top teams.
“It has been a World Cup of upsets as well. We’ve seen smaller teams beat some really fancy teams and I don’t think we have finished with upsets either," Klusener said.
However, the tournament has been massively impacted by rain with both the matches on Friday – Afghanistan vs Ireland and Australia vs England – being washed out.
“The unfortunate thing for me at the World Cup has been the rain, that’s been pretty much unseasonal, so little disappointed to be honest, it has been two rained out games. But that’s the case for everybody," he said.
Klusener, who is currently the head coach of Morrisville Samp Army in Abu Dhabi T10 League, reckons that shorter formats are helping players better their game contrary to the popular opinion.
“I think pretty much all the players that are playing in the leagues are coming from a system. All the international players are coming from Test cricket, they’re coming from good first-class setup," he said.
“That top quality players are not necessarily coming to the leagues to learn skills. They need to deliver a certain skill set, yes, but some players come to leagues and do really well and, have made it into their national teams because of performance in the leagues," he added.
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