South Africa won the fourth ODI by 5 wickets.
South Africa and India will be playing the 5th ODI of the six match series at Port Elizabeth. With AB de Villiers back in the team, the South African team looked dominant in the series for the first time in the 4th ODI.
India had an off day at Johannesburg as they made both tactical mistakes and on field mistakes, as the ploy to bowl second backfired and the spin twins faltered for the first time under pressure and gave runs by buckets against the duo of Miller and Klaasen.
Now with that thing on their mind, Virat Kohli might put the experimentation on the shelf and look to win this match and the series. Kohli and Dhawan showed that they are in excellent form, but the same cannot be said for Rohit Sharma and Hardik Pandya.
Rohit has not fired even once on the tour and Pandya has just one innings of 93 under his belt, but since then, he has not done anything of note with the ball or bat. Kedar Jadhav’s injury put a spanner in India’s plans and it showed that no one can trust Pandya to bowl all 10 overs by himself.
Kuldeep and Chahal just couldn’t spin the wet ball and with pressure mounting on them, their confidence collapsed and South Africa ran away with the game.
Virat Kohli also needs to review his tactics and Ravi Shastri needs to sit and talk with him about strategies. Persisting with spinners when they were going for runs, despite overs of Bumrah and Kumar was a grave mistake on his part.
South Africa on the other hand will be happy to gain some positive momentum in the series. AB de Villiers looked in good form before he fell abruptly and Proteas will hope he hits a big one at Port Elizabeth. Finally they have hit the right team combination and would want to carry the same winning team in the fifth ODI.
Toss: South Africa have won the toss and have opted to field
Playing XIs:
South Africa: Aiden Markram(c), Hashim Amla, Jean-Paul Duminy, AB de Villiers, David Miller, Heinrich Klaasen(w), Andile Phehlukwayo, Kagiso Rabada, Lungisani Ngidi, Morne Morkel, Tabraiz Shamsi
India : Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli(c), Ajinkya Rahane, Shreyas Iyer, MS Dhoni(w), Hardik Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Jasprit Bumrah