The dew factor has once again dominated both India and South Africa’s team meetings ahead of the deciding third ODI in Visakhapatnam on Saturday.
South Africa almost pulled off a stunning heist in the first ODI, but KL Rahul’s team managed to scrape through by 17 runs. In the second match, the visitors went past the finishing line despite being asked to chase 359 by India.
The fact that the home side keep losing the toss hasn’t helped their case either. Visakhapatnam hosted five games in the recently-concluded Women’s World Cup and on all five occasions, the chasing team ended up winning. That is a strong indication of what lies in store on Saturday.
For South Africa, this is an opportunity to pull off a rare double. India do notlose often, but the home bowlers have struggled to defend their totals.
India have not lost both the Test and ODI series of a tour at home since 1986-87.
Prasidh Krishna has leaked runs, but India do not have a back-up pacer in their ranks. So in all likelihood, India will go in with an unchanged XI.
“The biggest challenge, again, is going to be sort ofthe disparity between batting first and batting second,” said India’s assistant coachRyan ten Doeschate aheadof the third ODI. “I thinkit’s becoming more prominent in one-day cricket, and thatis the real challengeright there.”
“The fact that the dew kind of falls as the second innings starts... It means that the dew is there for the whole time, so a different start time could bring that effect down a little bit,” Ten Doeschate said. “If you started two hours early, that is a solution.”
The Indians had an optional nets on Friday with Yashasvi Jaiswal, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington and Tilak Varma sweating it out.
The focus was on sharpening their skills against left-arm pacers though Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have been on a roll. India hadtheir share of struggles against left-arm bowlers of late, especially Marco Jansen and Nandre Burger.
Apart from Jaiswal at the top, the middle and late-order batters too found it hard to put the left-arm bowlersaway, particularly in the business end of the last twoODIs, robbing India of some late bursts.
Ten Doeschate seemed aware of that. “There’s an element of responsibility that comes into it. Obviously, you don’t want to go (hard-hitting) too early and expose thetail. We’ve done pretty well with that.
“I think the slight slowdown you saw in both games in terms of the run-rate was a combination of the wickets slowing up a little bit as the ball got older.
“And then obviously, when new guys come to the wickets, it does take a little bit of time to get settled. But we spoke about how we can go a little bit harder,” Doeschate said.