South Africa To Target India's Inexperienced Attack: Lance Klusener
Ahead of the series-opener against India, South Africa’s assistant batting coach Lance Klusener has said that the visitors would look to exploit India’s inexperienced pace attack. India have rested their main men and have named the likes of Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed and Deepak Chahar.
The trio has together played 16 T20Is between them and Proteas are hopeful of making the most of it. India are the firm favourites to win the upcoming series and South Africa will have to be at their absolute best to cause an upset. India are entering the series on the back of a stunning tour of West Indies where they did not lose a single game across formats.
“Looking at the Indian team, that (inexperienced bowling attack) is an area we are going to take advantage of just like I suppose, you look at opposing teams and at areas, which you can take advantage of,” Lance Klusener told the media on the eve of the first T20I.
“They are great cricketers and we are not taking anything away from that and our focus will be on ourselves and little areas that we can take advantage and maybe that’s one of them,” he added.
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One surprising name in South Africa’s T20I squad is Temba Bavuma. The right-handed batsman is yet to make his T20I debut and his game style is more suited to Tests. When asked about him, Lance Klusener said:
“He recently got a hundred in the CSA (domestic ) T20 final. It’s easy to pigeonhole him and say okay he plays Test cricket. But Temba is wonderful all-round cricketer. Yes he needs to learn a couple of all-round options and that’s really about it.”
At the same time, the former allrounder agreed that Bavuma’s game will be more about rotating the strike and give opportunities to big hitters like David Miller, Dwayne Pretorius or Andile Phehlukwayo.
“He is not the biggest guy, who can muscle the ball over the fence, but there are different ways of doing it. I am uncomfortable saying he is a red-ball cricketer. He has played two ODIs with a hundred and a fifty, so he is a good cricketer,” the 48-year-old said.
“He will certainly get his opportunity on this tour and I think he is ready to make transition into being somebody in that engine room, who can be good at rotating strike and have good plans so that other hitters like David, Dwayne and Andile, some of the biggest hitters on the planet, can bat around him,” he further added.
South Africa, meanwhile, will also take inspiration from their performance in India on the last tour. They had lost the Test series but had won the T20Is and the ODIs.
