Afghanistan opt to bat v South Africa

After taking full advantage of South Africa’s decision to bat first and reducing them to 36 for 7 in the first match, Afghanistan decided to post a total in an attempt to win the series with a game to spare. But, given the heat in Sharjah, which has been described as excessive with a real feel of 49 degrees Celsius, Afghanistan’s opting for fielding at night may be about conserving energy, with South Africa set to endure the worst of the weather.

They made two changes to the XI that lost the opening game with the return of captain Temba Bavuma from illness and the inclusion of debutant legspinner Nqaba Peter. Bavuma’s re-entry to the team has not entirely displaced fellow opener Reeza Hendricks, who has moved down the order to No.3 but has left no room for middle-order batter Jason Smith.

South Africa also changed the composition of their bowling from four seamers and a spinner on Wednesday to three seamers and two specialist spinners. Peter, who played T20I cricket for South Africa in May, will make his ODI bow. Andile Phehlukwayo is the allrounder who sits out.

For Afghanistan, Gulbadin Naib, who hit the winning runs two days ago, was benched in favour of wicketkeeper-batter Ikram Alikhil. The rest of their line-up remained the same, with three frontline spin options in Rashid Khan, AM Ghazanfar and Nangyal Kharote and two seamers.

Afghanistan: 1 Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), 2 Riaz Hassan, 3 Rahmat Shah, 4 Hashmatullah Shahidi (capt), 5 Mohammed Nabi, 6 Ikram Alikhil, 7 Azmatullah Omarzai, 8 Rashid Khan, 9 AM Ghazanfar, 10 Fazalhaq Farooqi 11 Nangyal Kharote

South Africa: 1 Tony de Zorzi, 2 Temba Bavuma (capt), 3 Reeza Hendricks, 4 Aiden Markram, 5 Tristan Stubbs, 6 Kyle Verreynne (wk), 7 Wiaan Mulder, 8 Bjorn Fortuin, 9 Nandre Burger, 10 Nqaba Peter, 11 Lungi Ngidi