Today marks 10 days before the first international match on foreign soil for Eoin Morgan’s white-ball men and there is nothing more warming than watching your national team play sport in the sun.
While many South African fans have taken to social media to plea for AB de Villiers to make a return after his run in the IPL this year, the tour has been in doubt. The UK has been registered as “High Risk”, which cast a worrying doubt about the tour in recent days.
Newlands are still advertising the games on their digital boards at the stadium and despite the national lockdown put in place in the UK, the limited-overs tour does seem to be going ahead.
The last time these two teams met, they played all-three of the formats at South Africa, Centurion, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg, Paarl, West London, and Durban.
This time however, the Proteas will play three Twenty20s and three one-day internationals. With COVID-19 restrictions still in place, the games will be played behind closed doors and will only be held at Cape Town and Paarl as these have been made COVID-secure.
England will play a 50-over practice match on November 21 at Cape Town and a intra-squad practice match at Paarl on November 23. The real competitiveness begins on November 27, when the first T20 will be played at Newlands in Cape Town. This is the first international cricket that South Africa will have played and the first overseas tour for the opposition since the coronavirus pandemic.
Newsroom predictions:
Everyone wants to see the series played with good spirits and hope that QDK has a good run for his money in his first series as skipper against England. It would be nice for SA to get a series win on home soil but after seeing England last year, including their 2019 world cup campaign, Eoin Morgan’s men are looking strong. It will be Morgan against de Kock and only time will tell with just 10 days to go.
Read here about How to ‘Winter Well’ as a cricket fan
Newsroom ones-to-watch:
With the IPL over and done with, we at Park Life Sport are looking forward to seeing Kagiso Rabada take to the field and to take some key wickets for the Proteas. At the age of 25, KG is still very young, and we are really excited to watch him play. He was the top wicket-taker in the Indian Premier League this year whilst playing for the Delhi Capitals, taking 30 wickets in the 17 matches he played.
Cricket South Africa are excited to see this young man play: https://www.instagram.com/p/CHa8oGfrjW9/https://www.instagram.com/p/CHa8oGfrjW9/
It will also be exciting to see Quinton de Kock behind the stumps and at the crease, scoring a total of 503 runs in 16 matches at this year’s IPL, finishing sixth top run-scorer and second top run-scorer out of the overseas players.
As well as looking forward to seeing the familiar faces who have been playing in the IPL, I’m also looking forward to seeing the men who haven’t been playing out in the UAE. It will be good to see how much preparation they have been putting in over the winter, knowing that international cricket would return.
After seeing England secure their home world cup win last year then taking the lead in the T20 series in SA, it will be good to see if they’re still on top.
