South Africa won the toss and chose to field first in their T20 World Cup Group D match against the Netherlands in New York on Saturday.
Proteas skipper Aiden Markram won the toss and did not hesitate in his decision to send in Netherlands.
The Proteas did not make any changes to their team from their first match in the T20 World Cup in which they beat Sri Lanka. The Netherlands followed suit as they too, did not make any alterations from their side which triumphed over Nepal in their first tournament outing.
Markram said at the toss about his decision to bowl: “We’ve seen a few games on this track and we want to have first crack at it. We want to see if we can restrict them to a really chase-able total.”
🪙 TOSS | #NEDvSA
— Proteas Men (@ProteasMenCSA) June 8, 2024
The Proteas won the toss & elected to field.
We name an unchanged XI. 🇿![CDATA[]]>🇦#WozaNawe #BePartOfIt #OutOfThisWorld #T20WorldCup pic.twitter.com/S25jXgv7r0
‘Not a belter’
The SA captain also said it did help that their first game was also at the same venue.
“I would say so, but the wicket does look slightly different. We’re not looking at it being a belter.”
Though South Africa have lost their last two World Cup games against the Dutch, Markram said that would not have any influence on the clash.
“Not too much to be honest. You’ve seen in this World Cup you can’t take any team lightly, and history is history. It’s a big game for us and a chance to get it right for us today.”
Meanwhile, Netherlands captain Scott Edwards said his charges would take confidence from being a bogey team for the much-fancied Proteas.
“It’s probably something that comes up. We take a lot of confidence from games we’ve won with pretty similar teams.
“It’s a new day though, and we just have to be on today.”
Teams:
South Africa: 1 Quinton de Kock (wk), 2 Reeza Hendricks, 3 Aiden Markram (capt), 4 Heinrich Klaasen, 5 David Miller, 6 Tristan Stubbs, 7 Marco Jansen, 8 Keshav Maharaj, 9 Kagiso Rabada, 10 Anrich Nortje, 11 Ottneil Baartman.
Netherlands: 1 Max O'Dowd, 2 Michael Levitt, 3 Vikramjit Singh, 4 Scott Edwards (capt, wk), 5 Teja Nidamanuru, 6 Bas de Leede, 7 Sybrand Engelbrecht, 8 Logan van Beek, 9 Tim Pringle, 10 Paul van Meekeren, 11 Vivian Kingma.