South Africa vs India Prediction: Looking for middle-order magic at big prices

South Africa host India on Friday (15:00) at Durban for the first T20I of the Series, in what should be an intriguing and close-fought Series between two well-matched teams, broadcast live on Sky Sports Cricket.

Jamie Pacheco has 11/2 and 7/1 selections on the two top batsman markets to talk you through.

Cricket Odds

Team news:

South Africa

A combination of players who have opted out of national contracts and others being given time off to prepare for future Series has resulted in the absences of some-big name players for this Series.

Fast bowlers Lungi Ngidi and Kagiso Rabada come under the second category of players, while Anrich Nortje and Tabraiz Shamsi come under the first. Given all four are bowlers who would normally be in contention to make South Africa’s best T20 XI and the first conclusion to make about the squad is that their bowling looks a little light.

Still, all-rounder Marco Jansen and pace bowler Gerald Coetzee return after being given some time off to recover from heavy workloads, as do Heinrich Klassen, David Miller and Keshav Maharaj, who were left out of South Africa’s recent squads who were playing out in the UAE.

But there’s no return as of yet for Quinton de Kock. There’s a fair bit of uncertainty about his availability to play for his country in the shortest format (the only one he’s not officially retired from) and one feels that the longer this goes on for- not being called up - the more likely it is that he’s played his last match for the Proteas.

Aiden Markram leads the side and there are two uncapped players in it: all-rounders Mihlali Mpongwana and Andile Simelane, while Donovan Ferreira, in fine form at domestic level, is one to keep an eye on.

Possible XI:  Hendricks, Rickleton, Markram, Stubbs, Klassen, Miler, Ferreira, Jansen, Maharaj, Coetzee, Baartman.

India

A reminder that all of Ravindra Jadeja, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma retired after the last T20 World Cup, which they won. An upcoming Test series against Australia also means that the likes of Rishabh Pant, Jasprit Bumrah, Shubman Gill and Mohammad Siraj are focused on that rather than yet another T20 bilateral Series.

Ramandeep Singh and Vijaykumar Vyshak will earn their first caps, if selected, under the captaincy of Sky Yadav.

Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, Hardik Pandya and Axar Patel add much-needed experience to a relatively inexperienced squad while Varun Chakravarthy is one of three spin options alongside Patel and Ravi Bishnoi. The smart money is on only one of them playing with Abishek Sharma a decent part-time option in terms of spin.

Possible XI: Abishek Sharma, Samson, Sky Yadav, Tilak Varma, Hardik, Rinku Singh, Ramandeep Singh, Dayal, Avesh Khan, Arshdeep Singh, Chakravarthy.

Pitch and Conditions  

We’re at Durban for the first match, a ground where South Africa have struggled at, of late.

Last summer they lost three in a row here to Australia and all of them were pretty comfortable wins for the Aussies; the Proteas will have had plenty of time to ponder what went so badly wrong in that Series last year.

Once Australia passed 200 batting first and another time, they chased 191 to win the match so this can be a good wicket and big scores can be reached if members of the top order stay in long enough, allowing them to really accelerate at the end.

There doesn’t appear to be a toss bias so the skipper winning the toss may well choose to chase and at least know what they have to do in the second innings.

South Africa vs India Odds

South Africa are 5/6, implied probability of 54.5%. India are 20/21, implied probability 51.2%. This, ladies and gentlemen, is as close as the odds on both sides can be in a two-runner heat.

Perhaps that’s not surprising. India are slightly ahead on the overall head-to-head between the two (15-11) and interestingly, boast an even better record in matches played on South African soil: they’re 6-3 ahead on those.

The leveller is that this is pretty close to being the Proteas’ best XI with only really Kagiso Rabada missing from the equation while India, in a rebuilding stage anyway, are missing a handful of players who’d get into the side in normal circumstances.

If the odds can’t really split the two, then neither can I. I’d rather see how this first match pans out and save my money for other markets.

1 pt Tristan Stubbs to be South Africa Top Batsman @ 11/2

Last week in my preview of the First ODI between West Indies and England I made the point that Livingstone’s price of 6/1 for top England bat instantly stuck out like a sore thumb. As it happens, he won the market and so did we, but the wider point is that if a price instantly looks too big and after closer analysis still looks too big, then it’s probably because you’ve uncovered a really good value bet.

So, step forward 11/2 shot Tristan Stubbs. At 24 he’s already played over 100 T20 matches so is into the category of ‘experienced’ rather than ‘young gun’. This is a player with a strike rate of 137 in T20Is and an even bigger 150 across all his T20 matches, so an ability to hit a big ball when needed and always score quickly, two priceless advantages to consider when playing this market, are instantly ticked off.

Having started off batting at six or seven for the Proteas, he’s now more likely to come in at four, so unless someone gets to 70 or 80, he’ll face enough deliveries to come close.

The slight fly in the ointment is that his record in T20Is isn’t great. 25 knocks have produced just two fifties, so the stats don’t suggest he’s a regular winner in this market.

But then again, that’s why he’s 11/2 and a player like Klassen, who is a regular winner for top bat, is considerably shorter at 18/5 despite being likely to bat lower than him. So yes, there’s an element of taking a leap of faith on Stubbs; but there’s no doubting his quality, strike rate and the fact he'll have enough time at the crease, suggests that 11/2 is worth chancing.

Ryan Rickelton looks the next-best option on price at 3/1 given he’s a class act himself and will open.

1 pt Hardik Pandya to be India Top Batsman @ 7/1

A similar case to that of Stubbs can be made on the same grounds for India’s Hardik Pandya, at 7/1. In the first match of the recent Series against Bangladesh he also went off at 7/1 and his 39 not out on the day batting at five was enough to win the market, although you’d suspect he might need more than that this time round.

We all know who the man is to beat in this market - Sky Yadav (3/1) - but so do Betfred’s odds-compilers, who understandably make him the favourite. A quiet game from him here and we’ll await with interest what price the great man is next time round.

But back to Pandya. He’ll bat at four or five and a decent bowling line-up in what could be conditions that unsettle India’s top order could open the door for him to come in and rebuild, rather than start swinging from the hip straight away.

As we know, we only need a few of these to come off now and then with long-term profit preferable to high strike rates on winning bets at much shorter prices.  And Pandya ticks plenty of boxes for a 7/1 chance.