Stand-in New Zealand skipper Tom Latham on Tuesday called on his world-class bowlers to be proactive and understand the match-ups ahead of their crucial World Cup clash against a rampaging South Africa in Pune. It will be a battle between two formidable batting units when South Africa and New Zealand, who are currently at the second and third spots respectively, face off at the MCA stadium here on Wednesday. “Yeah, I think it’s just recognising situations as best you can and trying to be proactive as much as we can as well from a bowling point of view and I guess from a field placement point of view as well,” Latham said during the pre-match press conference.
“Like every team we do our scouting, trying to find weaknesses from a batting point of view from South Africa, they’re a team that’s running pretty hot at the moment.
“They’ve got some guys in form from a batting point of view. So again, it’s going to be another great challenge. And we have come to a different venue and we’ve got to adapt as quick as we can to this ground here in Pune.” South Africa have posted three of the six highest scores in this edition of the ODI World Cup and Latham said they will need to strike regularly to stop the Protea batters.
“Wickets are really important. That’s the way to stem the run rate as best you can by taking wickets and that’s not just at the top, that’s through the middle as well. We’ve seen South Africa, they’re running really hot at the moment. And they’ve got a lot of power throughout the whole line-up.
“I guess it’s just trying to understand the match-ups as best you can. And we certainly know we’ve got a world-class bowling attack as well and when they’re on song there and that’s certainly very threatening.
“So if they bowl to the best of their ability then we’ll certainly give ourselves a good chance and be it as I said on the back of that. South Africa has a lot of batters that are in form and it’s going to be a great contest tomorrow.” Giving an update on the injuries to their key players, Latham said: “There’s Lockie, Kane and Mark Chapman. We’ll obviously get through hopefully a bit of work today and then we’ll see how they pull up from a selection point of view.
“But yeah, obviously, Lockie went off in the last game with a bit of achilles’ niggle, so fingers crossed he’ll be fine for tomorrow.” While Lockie Ferguson suffered an achilles injury in the last game against Australia, Kane Williamson had fractured his thumb and couldn’t take part in their last two matches. Mark Chapman too remains in doubt due to a calf issue.
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