By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
South Africa will face the Netherlands in two One Day International (ODI) that could define their entire year, aiming to seal their place at the World Cup.
Following an exciting but disappointing 2-1 defeat against West Indies, the Proteas need to win both matches against the Dutch and hope Ireland lose at least one of their three clashes with Bangladesh in May.
The top eight teams in the World Cup Super League automatically qualify for the World Cup in India, with the bottom five needing to go through further qualifiers with five associate teams.
South Africa sit in 10th place, behind West Indies (eighth) and Sri Lanka (ninth), and ahead of Ireland in 11th, but two victories will take them up to eighth.
Their matches against the Dutch will be the conclusion of a three-match series that was supposed to take place in late 2021, but following no result in the first contest, the second two were postponed due to concerns around a COVID-19 variant.
Wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock says the Proteas are approaching their important clash against the Netherlands as any other game.
“Everyone knows the importance of these two games, but we’re just treating them like any other games,” De Kock told the media on Thursday. “We just have to make sure we come prepared and come out running. We know it won’t be easy, but we need to be professional and play the way we know we can. If we can do that, everything else should take care of itself.”
De Kock said: “It’s obviously quite nice that the guys got to spend time in the middle and found form during the West Indies series. We were disappointed to lose the series, but we were happy with the way we played.”
South Africa have also been playing some noticeably attracting cricket in recent months and the dashing opener says they are trying to be smarter about the way they were playing.
“We’re obviously trying to play an aggressive brand of cricket, but we’re also trying to be clever in the way we go about things… making sure we choose the right options, not just double stepping and trying to hit sixes all the time, it doesn’t work like that especially in the longer format,” he said. “We need to be clever, we need to be strategic with how we want to get more boundaries in a sense and build a bigger strike rate.
“So we are trying to attack more, but it’s a work in process for us. We know we will fail from time to time, but it’s been working for us and the guys are really enjoying it. It looks like the guys are really coming together with regard to this new way we want to go about playing.”
The match in Benoni is the first for the South Africans since they played Ireland in what was captain Temba Bavuma’s ODI debut match in September 2016.
Speaking about the venue, De Kock added: “It’s nice to be back here in Benoni. It’s been a while since my last game here, which was probably Temba’s debut. It’s generally a pretty decent wicket, hopefully the rain stays away so we can get down to playing some good cricket.”
Proteas ODI squad against Netherlands
Temba Bavuma (captain, DP World Lions), Quinton de Kock (Momentum Multiply Titans), Bjorn Fortuin (DP World Lions), Reeza Hendricks (DP World Lions), Marco Jansen (Dafabet Warriors), Heinrich Klaasen (Momentum Multiply Titans), Sisanda Magala (DP World Lions), Aiden Markram (Momentum Multiply Titans), David Miller (Hollywoodbets Dolphins), Lungi Ngidi (Momentum Multiply Titans), Anrich Nortje (Dafabet Warriors), Wayne Parnell (Six Gun Grill Western Province), Kagiso Rabada (DP World Lions), Tabraiz Shamsi (Momentum Multiply Titans), Rassie van der Dussen (DP World Lions).
South Africa Betway one-day international Series against Netherlands.
Friday, 31 March at 13:00
South Africa v Netherlands – Willowmoore Park, Benoni
Sunday, 02 April at 10:00 (Betway Pink Day)
South Africa v Netherlands – DP World Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg.