USA v South Africa: T20 Cricket World Cup – live

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I enjoyed this explainer from our American colleagues:

Could the US go all the way?

Let’s not get greedy. They’ve done superbly to make it to the Super 8s, where they’ll face South Africa (19 June), the West Indies (21 June) and reigning champions England or Scotland (23 June). Still, there have been other upsets. Afghanistan crushed New Zealand and Canada overcame Ireland. Perhaps most importantly, being in the Super 8 guarantees the US a berth in the next T20 World Cup, to be held in Sri Lanka and India in 2026.

The US are coached by the former Australian batter, Stuart Law. The US’s star bowler, Saurabh Netravalkar, is a software engineer at Oracle. Netravalkar, 32, bowled the tie-breaking “super over” against Pakistan and took the wicket of Virat Kohli, the Indian superstar with 269m Instagram followers, though India won the match. Netravalkar was born in Mumbai and played for India under-19s. Batter and vice-captain Aaron Jones, born in Queens and raised in Barbados, smashed 10 sixes in the win over Canada. (A six, or a “dinger”, as Chuck would call it, is scored when a batter hits a fly ball over the boundary, similar to a home run.)

USA win the toss and bowl first

Sunny, hot and humid in Antigua. With what looks to be a strong breeze across the ground, shirts billowing, a toupée botherer. Shaun Pollock is in the middle and says he doesn’t think it will be a high scoring wicket (it’s the unused pitch number 5, for all you pitch nerds out there).

USA have won the toss and will bowl first. “We’re going to go with the extra spinner,” Aaron Jones says after calling the coin correctly. “I don’t think it’s (the pitch) is going to be too different to Dallas.”

Aidan Markram admits he wasn’t entirely sure what to do had he won the toss. “We would also have leaned towards bowling but we’re not too bothered with the result of the toss.”

I’ll post the teams in a sec.

Preamble

In Pythagorean numerology the number eight represents victory, prosperity and overcoming. You knew that of course. The USA cricket team obviously did.

Hello and welcome to the OBO of the first game of the Super Eights in this T20 World Cup. Pakistan are on the plane home despite the timings of this fixture being earmarked by the ICC for subcontinent prime time time. That tells you something – nobody really expected the US to still be up and running, but that they are, and they’ve been one of the most exciting teams to watch in the tournament. Swatting aside Canada, holding their nerve against Pakistan and even causing a few wobbles in the mighty Indian batting line up.

South Africa are their opponents today, the Proteas have won all of their games… but not without incident. Having played three of their four matches on the tricksy New York wicket they’ve had a few scares along the way. Reduced to 12 for 4 hunting down 104 against the Dutch, winning by just four runs against Bangladesh and even squeakier – by a single run – against Nepal.

The Antigua pitch should suit the batters a bit more, but will by no means be a road. Let’s hope for a cracker to get the next phase of the tournament started.

Play begins in just over half an hour – 10:30am local time/ 3.30pm BST. If you are tuning in then do feel free to drop me a line – on Email or @Jimbo_Cricket.