Quote from: Patrol69 on Today at 03:00:57 PM

Quote from: Swordsoffreedom on Today at 06:25:51 AM

Quote from: Patrol69 on Today at 05:48:46 AM

In the 26th match of the World Cup, the two biggest teams of the tournament will meet in Chennai today. South Africa managed to secure their position by playing the first five matches but Pakistan could not secure their position at all. South Africa is number two in the points table with four wins after playing five matches and Pakistan is number six in the points table with only two wins after playing the same number of matches. It will be a tough fight between the two teams today.

After back-to-back defeats, Pakistan will definitely want to bounce back in today's match. If Pakistan can't come back in this match today, they will be far away from the semi-final and if South Africa wins this match today, they will have a big chance of making the semi-final.

Between Pakistan and South Africa, the team that wins the toss is guaranteed to bat first as it is safe to bat first on the Chennai wicket.

The pitch of MA Chidambaram Stadium is not batting friendly. The average score of the first innings of this pitch is 227 runs. However, in the previous match on this pitch, Pakistan team lost to Afghanistan even after giving a target of 283 runs. Opponent of today's match South Africa team is stronger. I would say the outcome of today's match will depend on the performance of the bowlers. Pakistan bowlers could not do well against Afghanistan. If Pakistan's bowlers don't perform well against South Africa as well then Pakistan will definitely lose and lose by a big margin. Pakistani bowlers must do well if they want to win today's match. However, today's match is likely to be competitive.

Even though Chennai's wicket was a bit of a bowling aid, I would say Pakistan didn't score enough runs in their first innings. The way the game played in 36 overs, Pakistan could have crossed the 300 mark but the batsmen's extra haste saw Pakistan's total piled on 270 runs in the end. With no wicket in hand, it was unwise for Pakistan to bat in haste at that time.

290 to 300 runs could have been scored even if they could have stood on the wicket till 50 overs but Pakistan could not do that. The target for South Africa is 271 runs but I won't say that Pakistan bowlers are bowling very well as they have picked up four wickets in 26 overs but if you look at the current run rate it will be seen that South African batsmen are picking up 6+ runs per over. With enough wickets in hand and not too much of a target, the outcome of this match might go in South Africa's favour.

South Africa is really performing well in this tournament. Other than the upsetting loss against a very weaker opponent, which was Netherlands, I believe, they have performed really well against all the other teams that they have faced so far. And it is not any different against Pakistan in this match as well. Right now, South Africa needs only 83 runs in 21 overs. That should be really easy for South Africa, considering the fact that they still have six wickets in hand. They also have two set batsmen in the middle. No way south Africa is going to lose this match. And let's be honest that target was really not big enough.