South Africa head coach Mark Boucher on Wednesday (December 30) has announced no change in the batting line-up for the upcoming second and final Test against Sri Lanka starting January 3 at the Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg.
In recent times, South Africa couldn’t manage more than 284 runs in any of its previous 13 innings in Test cricket, which lead to question-marks around their top six, but in the recent Boxing Day Test, they were totally impressive, posting 621 on the board albeit against an injury-depleted Sri Lanka attack.
The latest batting performance has managed to convince Boucher stick with the same top six batsmen as they are aiming for a clean sweep against Sri Lanka in Johannesburg after winning the first Boxing Day Test by an innings and 45-run in Pretoria.
As reported by Reuters, Boucher told reporters: “We just got 600, why would I want to change our batting order? In test cricket, you wait for your opportunity to come. We've got a couple of very good batters waiting in the wings and we will keep working with them so they are ready.”
The coach added, “For now, it will be very difficult for me to swap a batting order that has been through a couple of tough times of late and played well. I'll take the 600 and keep working on that. We've got tough Test series coming up against Pakistan and Australia. It's no time to start experimenting.”
Meanwhile, South Africa’s premier speedster Kagiso Rabada is now fit again after being medically cleared for the right abductor muscle strain injury and Boucher has admitted the temptation to play the start pacer in every game, but said they will have to be “smart” over his workload this season.
He signed off by saying, “Sometimes with bowlers you want to play a guy for the sake of playing him because he is your top bowler, but you need to consider his workloads, from a mental and physical side. We want to play KG (Rabada) all the time, but he has got to get his workloads up or there is a high risk of him getting injured.”
Noteworthy, Rabada had missed the first Test against Sri Lanka, but was named in the Proteas squad for the final Test but will not be an automatic selection for the game.
South Africa also recalled the left-arm seamer Beuran Hendricks for the second Test after he cleared COVID-19 protocols having tested positive for the Coronavirus before the team went into bio-bubble for the home series.
Uncapped Migael Pretorius was released after suffering a shoulder injury in training.
(With Reuters Inputs)
