AHMEDABAD: South Africa head coach Shukri Conrad has accepted the scale of his team’s upcoming Super Eight clash against India, describing it as the “biggest match of the tournament so far”, as his team prepares to face high stakes at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Sunday.
Conrad, who took charge in his first white-ball match, admitted that his worries about progressing to the group stage have now been replaced by excitement after South Africa successfully sealed their place in the next round.
“I was worried about the first half of the group stages. This is the excitement now,” Conrad said in Ahmedabad.
“There are almost three parts in competitive cricket. You have to find a way out of that group stage. So we did that. Now you say, OK, we’ve got India first and then we’ve got the West Indies with the most entertaining players in the world, and that excites me.”
South Africa will close their Super Eight campaign against neighbors Zimbabwe, although their qualification hopes could be decided before that match.
A packed stadium is expected for Sunday’s clash, with a significantly larger crowd than the 55,000 who attended their previous match at the same venue.
The match will be played on a black-clay pitch traditionally known to aid spin. While that may tilt the odds in India’s favour, Conrad insists the pressure will be shared equally by both teams.
“Pressure is a big thing but it’s pressure for us and for them,” he said. “I think we all talk about the pressure of playing against a top side, but we don’t know the pressures they’re under. I’m not saying a guy who’s got three ducks in the last three matches is under pressure to make his team. No.”
Conrad appeared to be referring to Indian batsman Abhishek Sharma, who is yet to register a score in the tournament and has been caught off-spin twice.
South Africa, meanwhile, have only two left-arm spinners in their first-choice attack, prompting captain Aiden Markram and Tristan Stubbs to bowl off-spin in the nets for long periods.
However, Conrad downplayed the emphasis on match-ups.
“Match-ups can be overrated. I’m not a big fan of that,” Conrad said. “Sometimes the wickets are so good that it takes the match-ups out of the equation. If there’s something on the wicket and there’s a bit of spin, there might be a match-up for the left-hander against the off-spinner, sometimes the angle you create. I think it’s a bit too much on good batting wickets, by and large.”
Despite a few 200-plus totals in the group stage, Conrad believes the surfaces were better than South Africa’s tour of India last year.
He attributed the lack of big scores – including the much-anticipated 300 – to the added weight of competitive cricket.
“The pressure of the World Cup,” Conrad said. “Before the World Cup, people were talking about 300-plus scores, but there’s a lot more at stake in World Cups in general. In bilateral matches, guys come in and they’re playing a lot more gay, but World Cups bring a lot of different pressure.”
For a team like India, reminded of history over and over again and stressed at every turn to retain the trophy, that level of scrutiny can take its toll – South Africa know it all too well.
“There’s a lot of scrutiny, especially a side like India. They’re going to be under a lot of pressure to get to the semi-finals and obviously go into the final,” Conrad said. “Hopefully we can expose them and make them vulnerable under that pressure.”
Boasting a bowling attack of Jasprit Bumrah and Varun Chakraborty, India along with a powerful batting unit pose a formidable challenge.
Ishan Kishan currently leads the list of sixes in the tournament with 11 sixes, while South Africa’s Ryan Rickelton and India’s Hardik Pandya are among the leading hitters.
Reflecting on South Africa’s 3-1 T20I series defeat in India last year, Conrad said the experience provided valuable preparation for the intensity of a big tournament on Indian soil.
“That tour gave us a good insight into what we could be up against. That tour prepared us well in terms of the animosity, the excitement built around Sunday, where 130,000 people are packed into the stadium on Sunday and they’re going to be blue,” he said.
“But Sunday is one of the few matches we have to win and we’re going to be as prepared as we can.”