the toss India elected to bat vs South Africa
India captain Harmanpreet Kaur won the toss and elected to bat first against South Africa in the fifth match of their T20I tri-series in East London. The visitors had pace bowling all-rounder Pooja Vastrakar back in the squad after recovering from an unspecified injury that kept her out of action since last October, as left-arm seamer Amanjot Kaur was left out.
South Africa also made one change, with senior fast bowler Shabnim Ismail returning in place of Masabata Klaas after missing the first three matches of the series. Ismail played the last T20 match in August last year.
Both India and South Africa have already qualified for the final of the tri-series to be played next week with four points each from two and three matches respectively. They also faced each other in the first match of the series on 19 January, when India won by 27 runs.
India remained unbeaten in the series, with the West Indies – the third team – already eliminated with one game to play. Thus, today’s result as well as India’s match against West Indies on Monday will have no bearing on the two finalists.
South AfricaSquads: 1 Laura Wolvaardt, 1 Tazmin Brits, 3 Marizanne Kapp, 4 Sune Luce (c), 5 Chloe Tryon, 6 Annerie Derksen, 7 Nadine de Klerk, 8 Sinalo Jafta (wk), 9 Shabnim Ismail, 10 Tumi Sekhukhun, 11 Nonkululeko mlaba
IndiaSquad: 1 Smriti Mandhana, 2 Yastika Bhatia (wk), 3 Harleen Deol, 4 Harmanpreet Kaur (c), 5 Jemimah Rodrigues, 6 Devika Vaidya, 7 Deepti Sharma, 8 Pooja Vastrakar, 9 Radha Yadav, 10 Shikha Pandey, 11 Rajeshwari Gaikwad
