MELBOURNE (Reuters) – South Africa’s pace attack will not attempt anything “fancy” against India’s star-studded batting order in Sunday’s T20 World Cup Super 12 match on what is expected to be a lively track in Perth, speedster Anrich Nortje said.
On a seamer-friendly surface at the Perth Stadium, South Africa would be tempted to unleash a four-pronged pace attack harnessing Lungi Ngidi and Marco Jansen with Nortje and Kagiso Rabada.
Nortje said they would need to identify the ideal line and length early to contain the India batsmen in the Super 12 contest.
“I think what we’ve seen the last few games, it’s been a really good wicket, lots of pace and bounce,” the 28-year-old told a news conference.
“We’re just going to … identify what is a good length and a good line on the day and try and stick to that.
“Not try and do anything fancy … Try and stick to our basics and sort of restrict – get as many wickets as possible, obviously, but restrict the runs as much as possible.”
Nortje called South Africa’s pace attack “one of the best” and potent enough to unsettle any batting order.
“We have great variety. We cover a lot of aspects. We cover a lot of bases with our attack,” he said.
“As a pace attack, we definitely back ourselves against any team to go out and do what we have to do on the day to try and get over the line.”
Inaugural champions India top Group 1 having won both their games looking largely settled except concerns over the form of opener KL Rahul who has scored four and nine so far.
India’s batting coach Vikram Rathour, however, ruled out replacing Rahul with Rishabh Pant, a change that would have introduced a left-hander in India’s top order.
“Two games, I don’t think that’s a good enough sample size anyways,” Rathour told reporters.
“He’s been batting really well and he’s batted really well in the practice games also. So we’re not looking at any such thing at the moment.”
(Reporting by Amlan Chakraborty in New Delhi; editing by Robert Birsel)
