Firdose Moonda is ESPNcricinfo's South Africa correspondent
Unchanged South Africa bowl; Gayle, Edwards in for West Indies
Written by I Dig Sports
Published in
Cricket
Thursday, 01 July 2021 10:59
South Africa opt to bowl v West Indies
Temba Bavuma won his first T20I toss and decided to put West Indies in to bat for the first time in this series. A win for South Africa here will give them a series win in the shortest format for the first time in two years.
Since beating Sri Lanka in March 2019, South Africa have lost to England (twice), Australia and Pakistan (both twice).
They went in with the same XI that pulled off a one-run win on Tuesday. That means there's still no seam-bowling allrounder for South Africa and Aiden Markram will operate as the sixth bowling option, as well as bat in the middle-order.
West Indies have strengthened their batting with the inclusion of Chris Gayle, after he was left out of the last match, and retained Shimron Hetmyer. There was no place for Jason Holder.
They have also included an extra seam bowler in Fidel Edwards and benched offspinner Kevin Sinclair, who has had decent outings in the series so far. Conditions in Grenada may be more pace-friendly with showers, cloud cover and high humidity during the day.
West Indies: 1 Lendl Simmons, 2 Evin Lewis 3 Chris Gayle, 4, Shimron Hetmeyer, 5 Kieron Pollard (capt), 6 Nicholas Pooran (wk), 7 Andre Russell, 8 Dwayne Bravo, 9 Fabian Allen, 10 Fidel Edwards, 11 Obed McCoy
South Africa 1 Quinton de Kock (wk), 2 Reeza Hendricks, 3 Temba Bavuma (capt), 4 Rassie van der Dussen, 5 Aiden Markram, 6 David Miller, 7 George Linde, 8 Kagiso Rabada, 9 Anrich Nortje, 10 Lungi Ngidi, 11 Tabraiz Shamsi