Toss India chose to bat vs South Africa
India captain Harmanpreet Kaur won the toss and chose to bat against South Africa in the fifth match of their T20I tri-series in East London. The visitors had pace-bowling allrounder Pooja Vastrakar making a comeback to the side after recovering from an unspecified injury that had kept her out of action since last October, as left-arm seamer Amanjot Kaur was left out.
South Africa also made a solitary change, with senior pace bowler Shabnim Ismail returning in place of Masabata Klaas after missing out on the first three games of the series. Ismail had last played a T20I in August last year.
Both India and South Africa, with four points each from two and three matches so far respectively, have already qualified for the final of the tri-series, to be played next week. They had also faced each other in the series opener on January 19, when India won by 27 runs.
India remain unbeaten in the series, with West Indies – the third team – already eliminated with a game left. Thus, today’s result as well as India’s match against West Indies on Monday will have no effect on the two finalists.
South Africa: 1 Laura Wolvaardt, 1 Tazmin Brits, 3 Marizanne Kapp, 4 Sune Luus (capt), 5 Chloe Tryon, 6 Annerie Dercksen, 7 Nadine de Klerk, 8 Sinalo Jafta (wk), 9 Shabnim Ismail, 10 Tumi Sekhukhune, 11 Nonkululeko Mlaba
India: 1 Smriti Mandhana, 2 Yastika Bhatia (wk), 3 Harleen Deol, 4 Harmanpreet Kaur (capt), 5 Jemimah Rodrigues, 6 Devika Vaidya, 7 Deepti Sharma, 8 Pooja Vastrakar, 9 Radha Yadav, 10 Shikha Pandey, 11 Rajeshwari Gayakwad
This article was originally published by Espncricinfo.com. Read the original article here.