Cape Town - The Proteas will do well not to be distracted by the carnival-like atmosphere that will engulf Chesterle-Street in the opening one-day international against England today.
The Durham locals will undoubtedly give their local hero Ben Stokes a royal send-off in his final ODI after the 31-year-old surprisingly announced his retirement from 50-overs cricket yesterday.
Stokes, who recently took over the England Test captaincy from Joe Root, claimed it’s “just unsustainable for me now” and that he wants to give “everything I have to Test cricket” and “my total commitment to the T20 format”.
The maverick World Cup winning all-rounder will be equally motivated to give his supporters something special to make a noise about with a rousing final act.
Proteas stand-in captain Keshav Maharaj will be hoping his bowling unit can keep Stokes and company in check though as the tourists look to start off their two-month long tour of England on a positive note.
“We haven’t done relatively well in the ODI format, but we’ve tried various formats and combinations, so hopefully we’ve found that rhythm to our game now,” Maharaj said.
“Obviously, England have come off quite a bit of cricket and they’re pretty much a more settled team. But having put in the hard work over the past 12 months, I think it’s about time we see some good results come this series and moving forward.
“The boys are really excited. It’s been a while since we’ve played our last ODI game and it’s been a substantial and lengthy build-up to the game, so the boys are ready to get onto the park, and hit the ball running.”
Despite the three-match series not forming part of the Super League, where the Proteas languish in 11th position on the standings and are in grave danger of not qualifying automatically for next year’s World Cup in India, they do have the extra motivation of trying to win a maiden white-ball series in England.
“I was actually made aware of it not so long ago, so yeah, it does present us with an opportunity to do something special as a unit. I think we've come a long way in all facets of the game as a team,” Maharaj said.
“So, it is an opportunity for us to create history as a team, but we are gonna take it one ball at a time, one game at a time, and, you know, hopefully we can cross over the line and achieve something really big as an ODI unit.”
The Proteas’ chances of starting on a positive note received a boost with Quinton de Kock, who retired from Test cricket at the end of last year, having recovered from a hand injury that saw him miss last week’s two warm-up games against the England Lions.
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