Shackling de Villiers key for NZ
Listen to Mitchell Santner talk about bowling to South Africa, and it quickly becomes clear that one of their batsmen looms above the others.
It should come as no surprise that it’s AB de Villiers, who scored his 9000th one-day international run on Saturday in Wellington, and finished that match with a career average of 54.05 and a strike rate of exactly 100.
In this series, he’s scored 167 runs off 163 balls, and played match-winning knocks in the first and third matches, which have left his side one win away from a series victory.
But while de Villiers has had a couple of big knocks, he hasn’t been bombastic, scoring just 54 runs in boundaries (12 fours and one six).
‘‘I think we’ve bowled reasonably well to him,’’ Santner said yesterday.
‘‘He hasn’t hit too many boundaries, but he’s really good at rotating the strike. When I’m bowling to him I’m trying to get dots when I can, but he’s so good at rotating the strike off our good balls.’’
While Trent Boult has taken de Villiers’ wicket both times it has fallen in this series, Santner has put the squeeze on him the best, allowing just 41 runs from 51 balls. Most of the attack have allowed him to score at about a run a ball, while Tim Southee (43 runs off 35 balls) and Lockie Ferguson (22 off 17) have come in for the most stick.
Spin would seem to be the best approach, then, which bodes well for the Black Caps as they prepare for tomorrow’s fourth ODI at Seddon Park, which they have to win if they are to keep the series alive heading into the final match on Saturday in Auckland.
Santner was joined by Ish Sodhi at the bowling crease in the first two ODIs, and together with Kane Williamson, they’ve sent down a historically high number of overs of spin – 49 of the 134 delivered so far.
Offspinner Jeetan Patel has joined the squad ahead of tomorrow’s game, giving coach Mike Hesson another option should the conditions be favourable for spin as is expected.
When the two teams were in Hamilton last Sunday, they found a spin-friendly surface that de Villiers labelled one of the toughest he’s ever faced, though on that occasion, it had been cooking under the covers for a while in the buildup.
‘‘We don’t know what the surface is going to be like, but if it’s anything like last time, then batting’s going to be hard,’’ said Santner.
‘‘That pitch was a bit wetter with the rain. If it’s going to spin we’ve got very good spin bowling options, but they’ve got [wrist spinners Imran] Tahir and [Tabraiz] Shamsi that can do a job as well.
‘‘It’s about not allowing ourselves to get flustered and trying to take the game as deep as possible.’’
The forecast is for a bit of rain tonight in Hamilton, but none tomorrow, which is fortunate, given that this game was moved there due to McLean Park’s drainage issues, so any rain on game day would have been ironic in the extreme.
Santner’s was one of several cheap wickets the Black Caps gave away on Saturday in being bowled out for 112 and losing by 159 runs, and he said it was important that the side moved on pretty quickly from that effort.
‘‘[South Africa’s total of] 270 was a pretty good score on that surface.
‘‘We didn’t bat as well as we’d like to have on that wicket. I think it did change a little bit, but credit to them, they did bowl very well and in very good areas and made us play bad shots and we did.’’