Johannesburg - South Africa’s selectors will leave it until a final meeting at the weekend to decide if Proteas captain Temba Bavuma will play in the opening match of the T20 World Cup.
Convenor of selectors Victor Mpitsang, who is in Brisbane where the team is continuing their preparations ahead of the tournament, remains reticent regarding Bavuma’s status, after the captain’s poor run of form in the T20 format recently.
“We obviously haven’t decided on the starting XI yet. We will be travelling to Hobart on Saturday, and then we want to look at conditions. We will have a meeting and get feedback from Bouch (coach Mark Boucher) before making a call,” Mpitsang said.
The Proteas’s last warm-up match against Bangladesh was rained out on Wednesday, preventing Bavuma from getting some much-needed time in the middle. “He would definitely have played,” said Mpitsang, who watched the team’s first warm-up match against New Zealand, which Bavuma missed to give him more time to recover from an illness that had also prevented him from playing in the last two one-day internationals against India two weeks ago.
Bavuma’s form has been in the spotlight since the Proteas tour to England, which he missed because of an elbow injury. In that T20 series, Reeza Hendricks struck a rich vein of form, claiming the player of the series honours against England with an aggregate of 180 runs, and more impressively a strike rate of 156.52. Hendricks has scored four half-centuries in his last five T20 international innings, and showed that his form was still good in India, when he replaced Bavuma and made 74 in the second ODI.
Rilee Rossouw has also performed well since his recall to the national team, and while his scores aren’t as consistent as Hendricks’, he has made 96 and 100 in two of his last five innings.
Asked if the selectors - which include Boucher - could ignore such form, Mpitsang said: “It is very difficult to say, erm ... we will make a call. It is good that everyone has had a good run.” Everyone except Bavuma that is, who’s last three T20 innings have seen him score 0, 0 and 3.
Mpitsang has watched closely as the team has been put through its paces at what he described as a couple of hard training sessions in Brisbane. “Everyone had a good practice (Thursday). (Bavuma) was looking good,” he said.
The other selection conundrum, while not as controversial, but will still likely cause debate, is about the composition of the bowling attack. “We’ve got many options,” said Mpitsang.
With quality quick bowling that now includes Marco Jansen who replaced the injured Dwaine Pretorius, South Africa has an embarrassment of riches in that department. Coupled with two quality spinners in Keshav Maharaj and Tabraiz Shamsi, the selectors will adopt a “horses-for-courses” policy.
“We will be assessing conditions carefully. There’s been a lot of rain around. The good thing is if we need to play two spinners, then we know we have the right players to do that. We are very happy with the resources that we have,” said Mpitsang.
SA’s first match is in Hobart on Monday against opponents that will be decided by the last set of first rounds matches, which will be played on Friday.
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