-After defeating Pakistan and India in their last home series, Bangladesh were confident in facing South Africa in the first ODI on Friday, but the visitors proved to be too strong as the Proteas won the rain affected game by eight wickets to take a 1-0 lead in the best of three ODI series.
Hence, the second ODI at Mirpur Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Dhaka on Sunday is going to be crucial for Bangladesh, who have to win the match to draw the series level. If it happens so, the third ODI between the two will prove to be the series decider.
During the first ODI, Bangladesh were surprised by Kasigo Radaba, who was making his international debut for the Proteas. The right-arm medium pacer came up with a brilliant spell, which included a hat-trick. Overall, he claimed six wickets to help his team win the first ODI. Rabada only became the second player in history to take a hat-trick on debut after Bangladesh's Tailjul Islam in 2014.
All the top four batsmen of Bangladesh - Tamim Iqbal, Soumya Sarkar, Litton Das and Mahmudullah Riyad - were dismissed by Rabada, which put the Bangladesh team on the back-foot. After the dismissal of their top-order players, Bangladesh failed to make a comeback as they started losing wickets at regular intervals.
Bangladesh to a certain extent depends on solid start from their opening pair of Iqbal and Sarkar as they did in the previous series. If these players come good at the top, the middle order has more often than not contributed to the teams score.
So an interesting battle is one the cards between the Bangladesh openers and the hero of the previous match, Rabada, who finished the first ODI with figures of 6 wickets for 16 runs.
However, the contest will not only be limited between the above-mentioned pair, as South Africa possess some big guns in their batting line-up as well, which was witnessed in the first ODI.
South Africa chased Bangladesh's score of 160 runs without any discomfort with more than eight overs to spare and only two wickets down. Faf du Plessis top-scored with 63 runs, while Rilee Rossouw scored 45 runs to chase the required target. Players such as JP Duminy and David Miller were not even required to bat.
So Bangladeshi skipper Mashrafe Mortaza, who is also their opening bowler, need to bowl better in the second ODI along with other spinners as well. But, it is going to be interesting to note if Bangladesh still play with eight batsmen or make some changes and rope in a bowler.
Bangladesh needs to come up with their A class game as they did against India and Pakistan earlier. They have it in them to defeat South Africa, but their performance against the Proteas have not been good enough.
Mortaza hopes to come up with a better performance in the second ODI.
"Against India and Pakistan we played unbelievably well. If we can play like that we can win against South Africa as well. But we haven't even been within touching distance of those performances or of South Africa. We hope to do much better in the second game," ESPN cricinfo quoted Mortaza as saying.
Where to Watch Live
The second ODI between Bangladesh vs South Africa in Dhaka is scheduled for 3pm local time (2:30pm IST, 5am ET, 10am BST) with live TV coverage in India on Star Sports 3/HD and Star Sports 4HD with live streaming on starsports.com.
Bangladeshi viewers can watch the game live on Gazi Tv.
South African viewers can watch the action live on Super Sport with the online option here.
