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SA v West Indies ODI series: Five players to watch
Having won the Test series 2-0, South Africa will be confident going into the ODI series against the West Indies, starting Thursday.
Lungi Ngidi is back in a South Africa team for the ODIs against the West Indies. Picture: Steve Bell – ICC/ICC via Getty Images
The three-match ODI series between the Proteas and West Indies gets underway in East London on Thursday.
Marco Jansen, Heinrich Klaasen, Aiden Markram and David Miller will only be available for the third ODI while Anrich Nortje and Kagiso Rabada are being rested for the series.
Keshav Maharaj and Wiaan Mulder are out injured and won’t feature at all.
Here are the five players who’ll be keen to impress in the series.
Temba Bavuma
The captain is coming off a Test series win and scoring 172 in the second Test.
Bavuma has struggled in T20 cricket and been left out of the latest squad, but he boasts an impressive ODI record, with an average of 45 from 23 matches and strike-rate of 87.
He has game to be a real threat, either at the top of the order or lower down and the confidence gained from his century last week should stand him in good stead over this series.
Gerald Coetzee
The fiery fast bowler made a big impression in his debut Test series while he also performed well in the recent SA20 competition, finishing third highest wicket-taker with 17.
The man with the headband will be keen to also impress in the 50-overs game, ahead of a World Cup later this year. He’s played just 12 domestic 50-overs games, taking 20 wickets, with a best of 5/33.
Coetzee’s lower order hitting could also be a plus for him with the fast bowling department pretty loaded.
Bjorn Fortuin
One of the stars of the SA20, Fortuin is in the form of his life. With bat and ball, the spinner and lower order batter has impressed in T20 and first-class cricket in the last few months.
It will be interesting to see how he goes in ODI cricket (he has played just three ODIs for the Proteas, compared to 13 T20s) and whether he will be used as an opening bowler, a role he fulfilled so well in the SA20, where he finished fifth highest wicket-taker with 14.
Lungi Ngidi
He has been one of South African cricket’s premier bowlers in the last few years, across all formats, but was surprisingly left out of the Test squad for the West Indies series.
The omission must have hurt the big fast bowler and he’ll be keen to hit back and show what he is made of in this series. he has 71 wickets from 42 ODIs at an average of 26.5 and best of 6/58 and economy of 5.7.
Like Coetzee, he is fighting among a big group of fast bowlers for a place in a World Cup squad.
Rassie van der Dussen
The man who simply can’t seem to do any wrong in ODI cricket, Van der Dussen will also have felt some disappointment at not cracking the Test squad.
But back in his most successful format (with an average of 67 from 41 matches and strike-rate of 90 with 11 50s and four hundreds), Van der Dussen, too, will want to remind everyone that he is far from being done playing international cricket.
